THE BATTLE OF JETTENA JUNCTION: RIDE TO GLORY OR RIDE TO HELL

By A.W. Bennett and Ben Lewis

The Battle of Jettena Junction is a remarkable work. This intriguing combination of fiction work and history textbook subverts and reverses the expectations of historical fiction, using plot as the backdrop of history rather than history as the backdrop for the plot - a history book with a dash of fiction rather than a fiction book with a dash of history.

*****

The Confederate States of America had suffered recent devastating defeats at the hands of the Union in recent months. Their capital, Richmond was now a smoldering ruin. Though their spirits were still high, the Confederacy was on the verge of collapse. One more devastating battle, one more dramatic defeat would see the end of the newly formed nation before the eyes of the world.
So when the opportunity arose to conclude the most devastating war in America's history, to end in their favor, what better way to end it but by capturing the Federal's leader, President Abraham Lincoln, a she traveled from Washington D.C., to Gettysburg to honor the fallen. The question was? Where was the best location to conduct their hit and run attack? Why, a small siding in Pennsylvania, named Jettena Junction.
But what was to be a simple in and out raid turned into a total rout the Confederacy.
Deceit, disobeyed orders and commands, betrayal, glory hunting, poor intelligence
All played their part as the cream of their military faced a determined foe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Feb 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781982299194

A.W. Bennett

I love to write. I have been writing for years. Composition was my favourite subject at school where I could use my imagination. I have always loved history and westerns. Growing up in Hay, NSW, I often watched westerns daily. I became fascinated with the Wild West as well as historical war movies. Leaving school, I wrote a series of short stories before focusing on the American Civil War and history as a whole. Following watching a documentary on President Abraham Lincoln’s journey to Gettysburg in November, 1863 and a plot to intercept the train, I got the idea of writing a story on it.

Book preview

THE BATTLE OF

JETTENA

JUNCTION

RIDE TO GLORY OR RIDE TO HELL

A.W. BENNETT & BEN LEWIS

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Copyright © 2024 A.W. Bennett & Ben Lewis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-9918-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9919-4 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 02/27/2024

On this day, on this very field, a new dawn in American History will be marked by a great battle, with much blood spilt on Jettena Junction’s soil.

By the third year of the American Civil War that had ravished the nation, although both sides were in a series of bloody stalemates, the war was now turning slowly in favor of the Union. The Confederacy had recently suffered several major disasters. The southern region lay in tatters.

Starvation filled the cities of the south. Many wondered if the war was worth the bloodshed and destruction to keep their fellow men of color in chains. The Confederate Government and Generals looked for a miracle that would save the south. This is that story and those who fought to preserve the Union to the end.

It was a battle, ten thousand years in the making, fought in one day.

Madam Ruby Poppy

CONTENTS

PREAMBLE

01   HONEST ‘ABE’ LINCOLN

02   JETTENA JUNCTION

03   THE CIVIL WAR RAILWAYS

ON THE EVE OF BATTLE

04   MILITIA

05   THE CROSSING OF MANY PATHS WITH ONE GOAL

06   A RAID THAT WENT WRONG

07   BY A STROKE OF LUCK

08   PEARCE’S LEGIONARIES

09   A CHILD WITH BIG DREAMS

10   NATIVE AMERICANS ARRIVE TO MEET THE GREAT WHITE FATHER

11   NORTH BOUND

12   IN SEARCH OF THE BALTIMORE COUNTY SOUTHERN PATRIOTS

13   BATTLE PLANS WERE DRAWN

14   BALTIMORE

15   THE LAUREL BRIDGE BURNERS

16   DARINKA EAGLEHAWK

17   THE ARRIVAL IN BALTIMORE

18   STREETS OF BLOOD

19   THE ALTERNATIVE SET OF BATTLE PLANS WERE DRAWN

20   THE BRITISH ARRIVE

21   HARRISON

THE OVERTURE

22   THE BATTLEFIELD

23   WARFARE-NAPOLEONIC TACTICS OF THE DAY

The Overnight Ruse

24   THE STANDUP FARM BRUSH

25   THE BATTLE OF JETTENA JUNCTION BEGINS

26   DOUBLEDAY’S REFLIEF FORCE ARRIVES

27   THE RAID ON PRESIDENT LINCOLN’S ROOM

28   THE STREETS RUN RED WITH BLOOD

29   THE TOWN’S LOAFER

30   THE SIEGE OF WOODS FARM

31   RAMPAGING THROUGH THE STREETS OF JETTENA JUNCTION

32   THE SIEGE OF THE LDMB TRADING POST

THE PRE-DAWN BOUT

33   THE PLOT BEGIN TO UNRAVEL

34   THE FIGHT BEGINS IN EARNEST

35   LIEUTENANT-COLONEL CLAUS VON SCHENK GRAF

36   IN TO THE FACE OF THE ENEMY

THE MORNING STRUGGLES

37   BENJAMIN LEWISHAM

38   DAFFY’S PATROL REACHES MORGANVILLE

39   THE NATIVE PLAINS MEN JOIN THE FRAY

40   CRATER RIDGE EXPLODES

41   RIDING INTO THE AMBUSH

42   THE BALTIMORE COUNTY SOUTHERN PATRIOTS REACHES MORGANVILLE

43   FULL SCALE WARFARE

44   AS TIME DRAGGED ON

45   CUSTARD

46   THE BATTLE LINGERS ON

47   ROUTS UBIQUITOUSLY

48   THE VIE FOR THE OVAL PLATE PLATEAU

49   CUSTARD TAKES COMMAND

50   CAVALRY FIELD

51   THE CONFEDERATES HIGH WATER MARK EVERY WHERE

52   THE DECIDING FACTORS

53   CLOSING IN FOR THE FINAL KILL

54   FINAL STANDS FAR AND WIDE

55   THE WESTERN FIELD CONCLUDES

56   WHILST THE EASTERN FIELD INTENSIFIES

57   AFTERMATH OF THE WESTERN BATTLEFIELD

THE MIDDAY LULL

58   GATHERING THE WOUNDED

59   BALDWIN’S RIDE

60   ARTHURSON’S ILLUSION

THE AFTERNOON DRIVE

61   TURNING THE TABLES

62   BATTLE TURNS INTO A SIEGE OF WITS

63   THE FINAL PUSH

64   THE CHARGE ACROSS CLAYTON’S BRIDGE

65   CUSTARD’S CHARGE

66   WAR IS HELL

67   THE MANOR

EVENING AND THE CLOSE OF DAY

68   ROUND TWO-HICKOK VERSES TIGAR

69   LINCOLN AT CLAYTON’S MANOR

70   REPERCUSSIONS

71   MEDAL OF HONORS

GLOSSARY FOR LOADING AND FIRING A CANNON

PREAMBLE

WHY MEN FOUGHT

T he changing industrial warfare led to butchery on a grand scale. There were many ways to measure the war. The American Civil War was a revolutionary conflict for the planet with steam power, repeating rifles, and improved cannons all changing the face of warfare. European powers sent observers to see how battles were fought, and how the rules of combat evolved.

What were the complex motivations that drove soldiers on both sides of the conflict? Civil War infantrymen slaughtered one another with the idea of the manly stand-up fight — men in tightly packed lines, standing up and firing muskets at each other across an open field — faded as the casualties mounted. From the beginning of the war with virtually no field fortifications, leaving men on both sides standing on that hallowed ground, whether it is the first or fiftieth time, one cannot help but ponder why Civil War soldiers fought with such reckless bravery, why they charged in parade-like formations, marching to certain death. Soldiers would make repeated charges against the enemy positions with both sides shredding these charges with well-aimed volleys and blasts of gunshots and artillery.

There are multitudes of reasons why soldiers decide to form a last stand, rather than to retreat or surrender. Some of them may have seen it as their utmost duty to never surrender, even in the face of overwhelming odds. Others might have been trying to buy some time before help could arrive or were attempting to defend a crucially important tactical location. Others, on the other hand, may have had no better alternative than to stay and fight, rather than to face an even more grisly fate by surrendering.

Some wholeheartedly believed in the stated war aims. Others had no choice but to fight, and tensions over conscription and the ability of the rich to avoid service exposed the class conflicts at the heart of both northern and southern society. African Americans, on the other hand, viewed service in the Union Army as a route to freedom and citizenship. Understanding soldiers’ reasons for fighting helps explain why the United States dissolved in 1861 and why such overwhelming violence was required to restore the union.

Ideas such as liberty, self-government, honor, duty, and manhood governed the decision-making of Civil War soldiers. Conflicts on the home front, such as the 1863 Draft Riots in New York City and the 1863 bread riots in Richmond, Virginia, and other Confederate cities, reflected class and race tensions heightened by wartime conditions and policies.

For Southern soldiers, the war was heavily romanticized. Plantation owners and other local gentry were among the first to volunteer for the gentlemen’s war, believing the conflict would last no more than a few months. Many Southern writers compared the Confederates’ cause to that of the patriots of the revolutionary generation, comparing the measures the North took against slavery to oppressive measures the British took against the American colonies.

Confederate motivations: Contrasts to the views of the Confederates regarding slavery to that of the colonial-era American revolutionaries of the late eighteenth century. Whilst the American colonists of the 1770s saw an incongruity with slave ownership and proclaiming to be fighting for liberty, the Confederates did not, as the Confederacy’s overriding ideology of white supremacy negated any contradiction between the two:

Unlike many slaveholders in the age of Thomas Jefferson, Confederate soldiers from slaveholding families expressed no feelings of embarrassment or inconsistency in fighting for their own liberty while holding other people in slavery. Indeed, white supremacy and the right of property in slaves were at the core of the ideology for which Confederate soldiers fought.

The Confederates did not discuss the issue of slavery as often as Union soldiers did, because most Confederate soldiers readily accepted as an obvious fact that they were fighting to perpetuate slavery, and thus did not feel a need to debate over it.

Only twenty percent of the sample of 429 Southern soldiers explicitly voiced proslavery convictions in their letters or diaries. As one might expect, a much higher percentage of soldiers from slaveholding families than from non-slaveholding families expressed such a purpose: thirty three percent, compared with twelve percent. Ironically, the proportion of Union soldiers who wrote about the slavery question was greater, as the next chapter will show. There is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox. Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for most Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern ‘rights’ and institutions for which they fought and did not feel compelled to discuss it.

Union motivations: Although Union soldiers primarily fought to preserve the United States as a country, they fought to end slavery as well, stating that: While restoration of the Union was the main goal for which they fought, they became convinced that this goal was unattainable without striking against slavery.

Northern writers also called upon the legacy of 1776 to urge their own troops to fight. They encouraged young men to volunteer and fight to preserve the Union their grandfathers had helped to build. Very few white soldiers specifically served in the Union Army to fight slavery. Saving the Union was their priority.

Conscription was also used in the North but proved highly unpopular after the lower classes discovered that there was a clause that allowed draftees to pay $300 to avoid having to serve. The controversy spilled out into draft riots in the city of New York, where as many as 200 people were killed by American and Irish rioters. Of course, conscription also gave the Union Army a huge, two-to-one advantage over their Confederate counterparts.

african american motivations: African Americans, for their part, served on both sides of the conflict. Colored soldiers fought to end slavery in the hope of establishing racial equality. In the Union Army, over 180,000 African Americans saw combat, while between 60,000-90,000 African Americans served in the Confederate Army, mostly as cooks, musicians, or hospital attendants. African Americans saw an opportunity to fight to prove they were worthy of freedom, and the so-called colored brigades became some of the most feared units in the Union Army.

Daily life in either army was tough. Armies camped where they could, and were often ill equipped, poorly fed, clothed, and trained. It was up to the officers of the army to keep morale up, which they did in a variety of ways, organizing trips to nearby towns, sing-a-longs, Sunday religious services, and sporting events, including baseball games.

Then, of course, there were the battles. Battles were marked by confusion; it was difficult to see most of the time, due to the smoke from rifles, and often armies would charge right into one another. Many soldiers were shocked that this gentlemen’s war was much more vicious and bloodier than they ever imagined!

Ultimately, the soldiers’ goals were simple: survive long enough to complete your term of service and return home. The fact that so many did not was an American tragedy.

01

HONEST ‘ABE’ LINCOLN

D ressed in his stove pipe hat, a tall tube-shaped silk hat for a man, long, black frock coat with matching trousers and size-fourteen goat skin, half-Wellingtons with elastic insteps boots, to emphasize his stance close to seven feet.

Abraham Lincoln served as the sixteenth president of the United States from 1861 onward, steered the Union through the American Civil War. Considered to be one of America’s greatest heroes, due to the fact he liberated the people of America from the practice of slavery. He also strengthened the government and economy and gave all the states and people of America something to believe in. He worked continuously to take the country forward. His life was nothing less than an inspiration.

People hardly knew what to make of this tall, thin-chested, raw-boned man who spoke with the frontier in his voice and walked with a shambling western slouch. The big feet planted flat at every step, the big hands dangling from wrists that hung down out of the sleeves of his rusty tailcoat. Mister Lincoln, they called him, or Lincoln, never Abe as in the campaign literature. The seamed, leathery face was becoming familiar, the mole on the right cheek, the high narrow forehead with the unruly, coarse black shock of hair above it, barely grizzled. The pale grey eyes set deep in bruised sockets, the broad mouth somewhat quizzical with a protruding lower lip, the pointed chin behind its recent growth of scraggly beard, the wry neck, a clown face, a sad face, some observed on closer inspection, perhaps the saddest they had ever seen.

Abraham Lincoln was born on February twelfth, 1809, near Hodgenville, Kentucky, the son of Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln, pioneer farmers. Both his parents were almost completely illiterate, meaning neither his parents could neither read nor write. At the age of two, he was taken by his parents to nearby Knob Creek and at eight to Spencer County, Indiana. The following year his mother died.

In 1819, his father married Sarah Bush Johnston, a kindly widow, who soon gained the boy’s affection. Sarah Bush was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Sarah Bush Lincoln was the second wife of Thomas Lincoln and stepmother of Abraham Lincoln. She was the third daughter to Hannah Davis and Christopher Bush, who served as a slave patrol captain and who was somewhat well off financially, described as a stirring, industrious man. The Bushes moved with their nine children to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, when Sarah was two years old. As a child, Sarah prided herself on her appearance and keeping up with the latest fashion. She had blue-grey eyes and was light complexioned. Sarah has been described as proud, energetic, hardworking, neat, and possessing good sense. Sarah Bush married Daniel Johnston on March thirteenth, 1806. The Johnston’s were parents to three children: John, Elizabeth, and Matilda.

Lincoln grew up a tall, gangling youth, who could hold his own in physical contests and showed great intellectual promise, although he had little formal education. At six feet, four inches tall, he was rawboned and lanky but muscular and physically powerful. He was especially noted for the skill and strength with which he could wield an axe. He spoke with a backwoods twang and walked in the long-striding, flat-footed, cautious manner of a plowman. Good-natured though somewhat moody, talented as a mimic and storyteller, he readily attracted friends. However, he was yet to demonstrate whatever other abilities he possessed.

In 1831, after moving with his family to Macon County, Illinois, he struck out on his own, taking cargo on a flatboat to New Orleans, Louisiana. Lincoln had not seen slaves before as he walked through the large cotton plantations and saw people working in the fields. Most of plantation owners treated their slaves very badly. The slaves were not given wages and were forced to get the work done. Some tried to run away from this labor. Many were caught and beaten mercilessly, sometimes even killed.

He saw with his own eyes whilst in New Orleans, some of the horrors of slavery. Various accounts state that the prominent southern slave trade that the young Lincoln saw on this trip heavily influenced him. This was an experience said to have prompted him to proclaim an oath to combat slavery, which he fulfilled decades later as president. He never could tolerate a moral wrong. At a time when drinking was almost universal, he was a total abstainer. Though born in a slave state, he had an earnest and growing repugnance to slavery. Still, up to this time he had never seen much of its workings. In New Orleans, he saw a slave market, the auctioning off human beings.

Abraham and his friend observed a slave auction. They saw the sale of a black girl in a slave market, a sight that saddened Lincoln. Lincoln saw it all. He saw a beautiful mulatto girl exhibited like a racehorse, her points dwelt on, one by one, in order, as the auctioneer said, that bidders might satisfy themselves whether the article they were offering to buy was sound or not. One of his companions justly said slavery ran the iron into him then and there. His soul was stirred with a righteous indignation. Turning to the others, he exclaimed with a solemn oath: Boys, if ever I get a chance to hit that thing [slavery] I will hit it hard!

Turning to his friend, Lincoln said, Let us get out of here, if I get a chance to kill that thing, I will definitely kill it. He meant to kill ‘slavery’. This was the first time that Lincoln had taken pity on the pitiable condition of the slaves. He saw the situation with his own eyes and decided on the spare of the moment that he would end this slavery system forever; He would do whatever he could for these slaves.

Returning to Illinois, he settled in New Salem, a short-lived community on the Sangamon River, where he split rails, worked as a laborer, postmaster, and shopkeeper to feed himself. It was here in New Salem that Abraham Lincoln obtained the title or nickname of ‘Honest Abe’. He received it when working as a store clerk. According to the story, he walked a long distance to give a customer the correct amount of change. He supposedly he never told a lie, hence the name ‘Honest Abe.’

Honest Abe was a nickname that Abraham Lincoln embraced with pride. He believed in his own integrity and worked diligently to maintain his reputation as an honest politician and lawyer, something that was not always easy in either of those fields.

He considered blacksmithing as a trade but finally decided in favor of the law. It was during this time, under the persuasion of John Todd Stuart, that Lincoln began to study law. Already having taught himself grammar and mathematics, he began to study law books. He read many books. He used to read advocacy books while staying at home. During this time, he met a retired judge. That judge, seeing his passion, gave him all the books of advocacy.

John Todd Stuart was a lawyer and a United States Representative from Illinois. Born near Lexington, Kentucky, Stuart graduated from Center College, Danville, Kentucky, in 1826. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1828, and commenced practice in Springfield, Illinois. He was a major in the Black Hawk War in 1832, where he first met Abraham Lincoln, who was in the same battalion as Stuart.

The Black Hawk Wars was he second major period of Indian warfare took place in the quarter century following the War of 1812, which was a conflict between the United States and Britain that began in 1812 and lasted until early 1815. United States president James Madison, the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817, reluctantly declared war to protect American ships on the high seas and to stop the British from impressing or seizing United States sailors when United States ships were being stopped and searched by both Britain and France as part of their own, on-going conflict. Madison also wanted to prevent Britain from forming alliances with Native Americans on the American frontier. Critics called the War of 1812 Mister Madison’s War, but others saw it as a second war of independence, an opportunity for Americans to defend their freedom and honor in the face of European disrespect. Neither Britain nor the United States were particularly well prepared to fight this war, and the conflict eventually ended in a stalemate.

This was a transitional period dominated by the imposition and consequences of a new policy, ‘Indian removal’, under which Eastern peoples were moved to lands west of the Mississippi. Although removal had been going on to some degree since the early 1800s, it was given new impetus by the Indian Removal Act of 1830, largely implemented during Andrew Jackson’s presidency from 1829 to 1837 and resulted in the uprooting of entire peoples from their homelands and their forced resettlement beyond the Mississippi.

Several wars stemmed from the refusal of some Native American groups to accept resettlement. The effort of the Sauk and Fox peoples to return to their homeland in early 1832 resulted in the Black Hawk War in Illinois and Wisconsin, which ended in the ‘Bad Axe Massacre’ on August third, 1832, in which most of the remaining Native Americans were killed as they tried to cross the Mississippi into Iowa.

Returning from the war, Lincoln began an unsuccessful venture in shop keeping that ended when his partner died. In 1833, he was appointed postmaster of New Salem but had to supplement his income with surveying and various other jobs. At the same time, he began to study law. That he gradually paid off his and his deceased partner’s debts firmly established his reputation for honesty. The story of his romance with Ann Rutledge, a local young woman whom he knew briefly before her early death, is unsubstantiated.

The twenty-two-year-old Ann Rutledge was allegedly Abraham Lincoln’s first love. Ann Mayes Rutledge was the third of ten children born to Mary Ann Miller Rutledge and James Rutledge. Her father was one of the co-founders of New Salem, Illinois in 1829. The relationship never really evolved due to a wave of typhoid that hit the town of New Salem. Ann Rutledge died at the age of twenty-two on August twenty-fifth, 1835. This sad event left Lincoln severely depressed.

Encouraged to run for the Illinois State Legislature, law government body of lawmakers, an official body, usually chosen by election, with the power to make, change, and repeal laws, He gained the respect of his fellow townspeople of New Salem because of his honesty. Abraham Lincoln stepped into politics to end slavery, but was defeated in 1832 in a race for the Illinois State Legislature,

He served as member of the Illinois House of Representatives between 1832 and 1836. Stuart encouraged Lincoln to study law and the two subsequently became law partners, between 1837 and 1841. If not for Stuart’s influence, it is conceivable that Lincoln might never have been interested in the law and thus, might not ever have become president.

Abraham Lincoln’s political career began to blossom in 1834 when he won the election to the Illinois state legislature. In his spare time, he took up land surveying and studying law, passed the bar examination in 1836. Lincoln was a Lawyer. After that he thought that economic development and justice to the poor. Immediately he began to practice law as a career.

Lincoln loved talking and arguing with his friends. The following year, he moved to the newly named state capital of Springfield, on the southern bank of the Sangamon River, west of Decatur, which offered many more opportunities for a lawyer than New Salem did.

At first, Lincoln was a partner of John T. Stuart. He served as Illinois circuit court judge and in 1847 was elected to the Illinois Constitutional Convention. From 1844, he took training of law with William Herndon, a law partner and biographer of President Abraham Lincoln. He was an early member of the new Republican Party and was elected mayor of Springfield, Illinois.

In 1842 Lincoln married Mary Todd, the daughter of a prominent Kentucky banker, and despite her somewhat difficult disposition, the marriage seems to have been reasonably successful. Moving to Springfield, Abraham Lincoln was introduced to Stuart’s favorite cousin, Mary Todd. She was a member of a large, wealthy, slave-owning Kentucky family, and well educated. Born Mary Ann Todd, she dropped the name Ann after her younger sister, Ann Todd, was born. After finishing school during her teens, she moved to Springfield, Illinois, where she lived with her married sister Elizabeth Edwards. Before she married Abraham Lincoln, Mary was courted by his long-time political opponent Stephen A. Douglas. She and Lincoln had four sons together, three of whom died young. Only the eldest, Robert Todd Lincoln, survived his parents.

She staunchly supported her husband throughout his presidency and was active in keeping national morale high during the Civil War. She acted as the White House social coordinator, throwing lavish balls and redecorating the White House at great expense; her spending was the source of much consternation.

Mary suffered from numerous physical and mental health issues during her life. She had frequent migraines, which were exacerbated by a head injury in 1863.

Lincoln was elected to Congress, the United States Federal legislature, governing and law-making body, consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The session of Congress was a two-year term. The members of Congress during such a term are referred to by the Congress title.

He attracted attention because of his outspoken criticism of the war with Mexico from 1846 to 1848, a conflict between the United States and Mexico. The war resulted in a decisive United States victory and forced Mexico to relinquish all claims to approximately half its national territory. At the same time, he formulated a plan for gradual emancipation in the District of Columbia. He was not an abolitionist, however. Conceding the right of the states to manage their own affairs, he merely sought to prevent the spread of human bondage.

Disappointed in a quest for federal office at the end of his one term in Congress from 1847 to 1849, Lincoln returned to Springfield to pursue his profession. In 1854, however, because of his alarm at Senator Stephen A. Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act, he became politically active again.

Stephen Arnold Douglas was an American politician, noted for his debates with Abraham Lincoln. He practiced law in Illinois, where he became successively public prosecutor, legislative member in 1836, before becoming state secretary in 1840, and finally judge of the state supreme court from 1841 to 1843.

Douglas was elected to the United States House of Representatives and served from 1843 until 1847. He became an outstanding spokesperson for a policy of national expansion. Douglas was soon nicknamed the Little Giant, for his small stature but great ability as an orator and legislator. He advocated the annexation of Texas, supported the war with Mexico, and opposed compromise with Great Britain in the Oregon dispute. He became chairman of the Committee on Territories in the House, and, when elected to the United States Senate in 1847 by the state legislature, Douglas was chosen head of the Senate Committee on Territories.

Douglas, however, brought about the reopening of the entire slavery question in 1854 by incorporating in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the bills that established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska the principle of popular sovereignty, which provided that the inhabitants of these territories might decide whether slavery should be permitted within their borders.

The ‘Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854’ was a United States law authorizing the creation of Kansas and Nebraska, west of the states of Missouri and Iowa and divided by the fortieth parallel. It repealed a provision of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that had prohibited slavery in the territories north of the thirty-six-degree, thirty-minute parallel, and stipulated that the inhabitants of the territories should decide for themselves the legality of slaveholding. The passage of the act caused a realignment of the major United States political parties and greatly increased tension between North and South in the years before the American Civil War.

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill was sponsored by the Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. By opening what had been Native American country to white settlement, Douglas and other northern leaders hoped to facilitate construction of a transcontinental railway through their states rather than through the southern part of the country. The removal of the restriction on the expansion of slavery ensured southern support for the bill, which was signed into law by President Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth president of the United States from 1853 to 1857, on May thirtieth, 1854.

The act’s passage and stormy implementation split the Democratic Party, one of the two major political parties in the United States, formed after a split in the former Democratic-Republican Party, a former United States political party that was founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1792 and was dissolved in 1828 under Andrew Jackson.

The act also destroyed the already badly divided Whig Party, a nineteenth-century United States political party that favored a loose interpretation of the Constitution and opposed the Democratic Party, formed by supporters of the American side against the British in the American Revolution. The Whig opposition to the measure practically ended support for that party in the South. The northern Whigs joined antislavery Democrats and Know-Nothings to form the Republican Party in July 1854.

A conflict soon developed in Kansas between pro-slavery settlers from Missouri and antislavery newcomers who began to move into the territory from the northeastern states, such as John Brown. Fighting broke out between the two groups, which became known as the ‘Border War’, continuing for several years, aggravating the sectional controversy that led to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861?

In 1858, while campaigning for the election of friendly candidates for the state senate to ensure his selection for a third term as United States senator from Illinois, Douglas was opposed by Lincoln, and the two candidates met in a momentous series of debates on the slavery issue. Douglas was re-elected, but the Lincoln candidates gained more popular votes, and Lincoln emerged with a national reputation. In 1860, Douglas and Lincoln were opponents for the presidential election. Douglas had won the Democratic nomination, but Southern Democratic delegates seceded and nominated the incumbent vice-president, John Cabell Breckinridge, an American lawyer, soldier, and statesman, the fourteenth vice-president of the United States, thus splitting the party vote.

Douglas lost the election, When the American Civil War broke out, Douglas gave Lincoln loyal support. He contracted typhoid fever while on a mission in the mid-western and Border States to rally popular backing for the Union cause, and he died in Chicago on June third, 1861.

His birth in a slave state notwithstanding, Lincoln had long opposed slavery. In the legislature, he voted against resolutions favorable to the peculiar institution a vexed issue being the subject of much debate in the first half of the nineteenth century, referring to the system of slavery in the southern states of the United States. In 1837, He was one of two members who signed a protest against it.

Clearly setting forth his opposition to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he argued that the measure was wrong because slavery was wrong and that Congress should keep the territories free for actual settlers, as opposed to those who traveled there mainly to vote for or against slavery. The following year he ran for the United States Senate, but seeing that he could not win, he yielded to Lyman Trumbull, a Democrat who opposed Douglas’s bill. He campaigned for the newly founded Republican Party in 1856, and in 1858, he became its senatorial candidate against Douglas. In a speech to the party’s state convention that year he warned that a house divided against itself can not stand and predicted the eventual triumph of freedom. Meeting Douglas in a series of debates, he challenged his opponent in effect to explain how he could reconcile his principles of popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision.

The ‘Dred Scott’ Case was a landmark court case of the 1850s in which the Supreme Court of the United States declared that a black person could not be a United States citizen. The Court also determined that the portion of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that banned slavery in United States territories north and west of the state of Missouri was unconstitutional. Officially titled Scott verses Sandford, the decision intensified the on-going debates over slavery that further polarized the American North and South and eventually gave rise to the American Civil War in 1861.

Dred Scott was a slave who, when taken by his master to a territory that forbade slavery, tried to seek release from his bondage. The Court asserted that because the Constitution did not recognize blacks as citizens (whether slave or free), they could not bring suit in federal court. In addition, the Dred Scott ruling invalidated the Missouri Compromise of 1820, with the Court holding that slavery could not be prohibited by Congress in any of the United States territories. This was only the second time that a statute enacted by the United States Congress was overruled by the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional. In 1846, Dred Scott, living in Saint Louis, Missouri, sued to prove that he, his wife Harriet, and their two daughters were legally entitled to their freedom.

After being tried in Missouri state courts and in a federal circuit court, the case went before the United States Supreme Court in 1856. The following year, the Court rejected Scott’s claim. Speaking for the Court was Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney.

Roger Brooke Taney was an American jurist, a legal expert in the science or philosophy of law, especially a judge or legal scholar and the Fifth Chief Justice of the United States, well known for his controversial decision in the Dred Scott case. He held various positions before being confirmed as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1836, despite Whig party opposition. Under Taney’s leadership of the Court, federal judicial power over corporations was expanded, inland waters were placed under the control of the nation, and the federal government was held to exercise exclusive power over foreign relations. In 1857, Taney delivered a landmark decision in the Dred Scott case that did much to polarize further the North and the South and to antagonize the abolitionists fighting for an end to slavery.

Taney concluded that ‘blacks’, even when free, could never become citizens of the United States and thus did not have a right to sue in federal courts. Taney also declared that Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in federal territories, a ruling that invalidated the part of the Missouri Compromise that banned slavery in the western territories.

*       *       *

In his reply, Douglas reaffirmed his belief in the practical ability of settlers to keep slavery out of the territories despite the Supreme Court’s denial of their right to do so. Although Lincoln lost the election to Douglas, the debates won him national recognition.

In 1860, the Republicans, anxious to attract as many different factions as possible, nominated Lincoln for the presidency on a platform of slavery restriction, internal improvements, homesteads, and tariff reform. In a campaign against Douglas and John C. Breckinridge, two rival Democrats, and John Bell, of the Constitutional Union party,

John Bell was an American statesman from Tennessee. He practiced law and served in the Tennessee Senate before entering the United States House of Representatives in 1827 as a Democrat. He joined the Whig party in 1829. From 1847 to 1859, Bell served in the United States Senate as a Whig. In 1860, Bell was the presidential candidate of the Constitutional Union party. He won the electoral votes of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, but he lost the election to Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate. Bell at first opposed the secession of the southern states, but he later endorsed the Confederate States of America. Lincoln won a majority of the electoral votes and was elected president.

Immediately after the election, South Carolina, followed by six other Southern states, took steps to secede from the Union. Declaring that secession was illegal but at the same time, he had no power to oppose it, President James Buchanan, the fifteenth president of the United States from 1857 to 1861, tried unsuccessfully to stave off the crisis that led to the American Civil War, preferred to rely on Congress to find a compromise. The success of this effort, however, depended on Lincoln, the president-elect, who was open to concessions but refused to countenance any possible extension of slavery. Thus, the Crittenden Compromise, the most promising scheme of adjustment, failed, and a new Southern government were inaugurated in February 1861 as the Confederate States of America. Anxious not to offend the upper South, which had not yet seceded, Lincoln at first refused to take decisive action? After the failure of an expedition to Fort Pickens in Florida, however, he decided to relieve Fort Sumter and informed the governor of South Carolina of his intention to send food to the beleaguered garrison. The Confederates, unwilling to permit continued federal occupation of their soil, opened fire on the fort, thus starting the Civil War. When Lincoln countered with a call for 75,000 volunteers, the North responded with enthusiasm, but the upper South seceded. The American Civil War had begun.

02

JETTENA JUNCTION

T he municipal of Jettena Junction developed to a civilized community by 1863, a free, open society to all, regardless of color or creed. This law allowed the community to prosper. Under the leadership of Madam Mayor Kylie Wright, an attractive fifty-year-old, blond-haired woman with a very slim lined feature, which she showed off in the clothing she wore: she refused to wear the bustles and hoops that made her look larger than she was, instead she wore tight fitting attractive dresses. Her deputy was the older Fiona Franz but only by several years. Fiona, like many of the citizens, was a native Jettena Junction born. Abetted by their fellow four councilors, the near all female Council compromising of Penny Goodland, with mother and daughter combination of Tracey and Shantelle Wadley. The only male member, the thin and tall dark olive-skinned colored Neville Johns, known as the ankle sniper owing to his sarcastic mocking of any opponent that opposed his fellow Councilor by repeating their words or behavior. When seen out in public, Johns would be at the rear of the group, stirring up the crowd with his crude body language. Neville Johns was a great grandson of two of the founders of Jettena Junction, Richard Dawson and Daniel Mannix and the grandson of the now proprietor of the LDMB Trading Post, William ‘Wiggs" and Mary Mannix.

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Jettena Junction was a typical northeastern Victorian era-society. Situated on the eastern shore of the Codorus Creek, the layout of the town’s layout was designed in a rectangular shape, consisting of three horizontal streets running parallel to the rail-line that ran north south. At the end of the streets, vertical streets enclosed the ends forming the box shape layout of the community. Most of the buildings were made of stone. Multi-story structures line the commercial center, lowering to either single or double story structures of the residential edifices.

The street naming was simple, named after the founders of the township. Co-incidentally that three of the four founders first names were ‘William’. It was fitting that the first street by the rail-line, thus been named ‘William Street’. It consisted of the railway station, a large stone building and plate-form. The local telegraph office was situated within the railway station complex. Next to the railway station was the three-story Hotel ran by Sharyon Young, the sister of the Richmond Penitently, Gavin Young and her close friend, Christie Gulf, who along with their colored husbands, Michael, and Jeremy, were forced into exile from Richmond at the outbreak of the war. The two close friends ran the hotel with success, catering for arriving and long-term guests.

On the blind side of William Street, the central plaza consisting of a row of long, narrow double story terrace buildings, close together. The façade to façade stretched the length and breadth of Lamanasity Street. These were the business sector of Jettena Junction. A fine collection of stone buildings, the general store, bank, barber shop, eatery which catered for inside eating and outside on pleasant days, and gun smith store. Among other businesses, a dry goods store, post office, feed store, land office, milliner, and dressmakers benefited from their trade. A three-story boarding house was the last building proprietor of these businesses. All were connected by covered wooden walkways. Irrigation ditches ran parallel to the streets, along the shoulders, resulting in a series of tiny driveway bridges to ford these small ditches.

There were a few private single-story houses located on the Lamanasity Street but typically as one came into or were leaving town. The reasons were because of the dust in the summer and the mud in the spring and winter. Most private structures were situated on ‘Bennett’ Street. Many of them were made of wood, though some were made of brick and stone with large verandas at the front. Town lots were often twenty-five feet wide with small picket fences out the front and a small flower garden to beatify the appearance. The outhouses were out back.

To the northern end of the township ran Mannix Street, the local church, and the schoolhouse, in one. The grounds around the large white stone structure were clear for parking of horses and carriages. The school and church were downstairs with the fraternal building upstairs in the same structure. The Town Hall, a distinctive two story a detached structure, was located next to the church. The Town Hall also served as the local courthouse, where the circuit judge presided over his cases when he visited the township.

Skye Blu was the schoolmistress. Local lass, she had been educated in the town. Skye, with a warm, welcomed smile for everyone. She took over the teachings of the local school when the former teacher, Misses Casey passed away two years prior. Miss Blu was well respected by all. The understanding of basic languages and mathematics helped the students of all ages. She would lend personal attention to those who needed it and with the help of more advanced students, brought the whole class to a near equal footing in learning. Skye was about five foot, three inches in height, slim build with long flowing black hair. Her voice was soft with care. Skye Blu also taught bible classes and Sunday school in the community.

On the western side of the rail-line, Jettena Junction’s industrial area functioned without disrupting the commercial center. The Livery stables, barns and the local blacksmith shop were attached to the coral section of the stockyards where cattle were loaded or unloaded from trains. All were located within walking distance from the business area.

The local trading post was the original one that had been built over a hundred years before, now run by ‘Wiggs’ Mannix, the son of Daniel Mannix and his wife Mary, the daughter of Richard Dawson. Over on Lake Sooty, a fishing industry establishment prospered, employing many of the local citizens. From a fish warehouse where the catches were cleaned and packed for sale, to a refinery where the waste was boiled and rendered to fertilizer for the farmers. There was also a tanning enterprise on the shore of Lake Sooty where hides and pelts were treated. Other outbuildings with metal roofing and siding, lined the shore of the lake where businesses prospered for the community.

Fort Buster, like most of the military outposts, was located separate from the town site. Fort Buster was located on the official site, west of the rail-line, where it had stood for over a hundred years. Over the years, many modifications had improved the structure of the fort. The military did not generally engage in planning communities. The fort was surrounded by walls and the town grew up outside of it. The town Jettena Junction grew and included the fort in its municipal.

A mile to the north, a large lavish whitewashed stone mansion sat upon a small rise, the home of Lady Lynn Wallace, a small, stocky woman in her early sixties. Eyes of soft brown, auburn like the western sunset, Lady Lynn originated in England, from a wealthy aristocracy family that spanned back in time to the era of knights and the crusades of the twelfth century. Lynn’s family had lost all their royal titles when her grandfather, Lord Wallace fought for the Colonies during the Revolutionary War, thus branded a traitor by the crown. After the war, the Wallace Family moved from Philadelphia where he served in the military, defending the city until it fell to the British in 1777. He and his family were forced to flee along with General Washington’s army to Valley Forge. Following the war, the Wallace family returned to Philadelphia. Born early in 1805, Lynn was educated in the best of schools both in America and in Europe. Returning to the United States in 1830, Lynn saw the opportunity to educate wealthy women on the finer styles of life. Her first finishing school in Philadelphia was a failure. A close associate told her to open her school outside the major city, sighting the emerging township of Jettena Junction as a suitable location. With her family’s fortune as a backing, Lynn Wallace built the mansion that would house her ‘Lady Lynn’s Fine Finishing School’. At first, she would only accept wealthy women, which was again a financial disaster. It was not until Lynn accepted all class of women to her school, that it became profitable. With financial assistance from the Pennsylvanian State Government, Lady Lynn Wallace was able to take in boarders to her mansion to help make ends meet, financially.

When Miss Wright took control of the mayor ship of Jettena Junction in 1860, she approached Lady Lynn and invited her to take her teachings to the local community, asking her to be the principal of the local school. Lynn abruptly refused, claiming there would not be the finance to meet her requirements.

The only structure on situated on Dawson Street at the other end of the platted grid, the twelve by twelve-foot red brick jail house, with an attached smaller wooden building that was the home of the local Law Enforcement Officer. The latest Police Constable, Scott Nichols however did not dwell at the local sheriff’s Office, he had his own private house on Bennett Street, nearly directly opposite the jailhouse, where he lived with his attractive wife, Diane. On agreement, the former sheriff, Claude ‘Stumpy’ Hawkes, was given the right to remain in the attached residence. Stumpy Hawkes had a clubfoot, a congenital condition of the foot, especially one in which the foot is twisted and turned inward, slowing his movement. It did not affect his behavior. Hawkes was a mischievous, playfully naughty, troublesome prankster aged gentleman, who outgrew his capabilities to perform his duties, often involved in fistfights.

He began to drink heavily, often begging customers to buy him a drink. During his reign as sheriff, crime within Jettena Junction skyrocketed, increased dramatically and quickly. Respectable people were not game to be seen on the streets due to the rowdiness of the uncivilized people who blew into the community. There were a number of saloons and public bars, totaling seven in the community. At the time, the local council, made up of men, under the leadership of Mayor Jeremy Gutwitt, allowed such activities to continue. Gutwitt’s local government eventually lost reality with the local community’s needs as it sought to assist the wealthy investors who intended to profit from organized crime such as gambling in the public establishments and the so called ‘shebeen’, a small establishment that sold alcoholic beverages illegally or without a license, traditionally operating in the poorer districts. Families began to crumble. Complaint after complaint was lodged with the assembly but they were ignored. At the same time, the crime rate increased. It was when Miss Wright and her associates took action to reform the situation, writing to the Governor of Pennsylvania, William Fisher Packer in 1860. Governor Packer, aware of the situation due to an increase of complaints by the Military Commander of Fort Buster, who often had to act as the local Law Enforcement Officer as well, sent the tall, lanky officer Nichols from Philadelphia. Constable Nichols came with a highly recommendation from his superiors who said he would clean up the township. Black hair and clean-shaven, mid-twenties, the six foot six, the thin man was a gentleman to all. His assignment was to be temporary until a suitable replacement for Hawkes could be assigned.

Nichols arrived, by train, to a cold reception in Jettena Junction in late July of that year. It was the day after the yearly large cattle sale. All the cattle breeders and hire hands had been celebrating. The streets were deserted except for the few drunken cowhands that either lay about in the dirt or staggered about with bottles of booze in hand. Some even fired their revolvers into the air or at buildings, causing damage. This did not impress Nichols.

Inquiring from the Telegraph Officer, the whereabouts of the local Sheriff, Nichols, not revealing his identity, was directed to the saloon directly opposite the railway station. Hawkes was the life of the party within the saloon that morning. The cowhands had been filling up a spittoon, receptacle for spittle, a container, formerly common in public places such as bars, into which tobacco chewers spat the munched waste. Cheap whiskey was poured into the mix, from which Hawkes would drink from for the luxury of a free drink. Getting Hawkes drunk meant that the ranch-hands could play up without the interference of the law, or so they thought. Hawkes, so intoxicated from a night of drinking, did not realize that the hired workers were spitting into the vessel before pouring in the gut-rote liquor. He acquired the contemptuous nickname ‘Borrachón’, Spanish for big drunk, which he believed they were honoring him, not making a fool of him as they were, laughing behind his back. As Hawkes reached for the bowl, Nichols appeared, hitting the spittoon away from his hands, sending the metal bowl flying, spilling the contents. Looking at Hawkes with disgust, Nichols actions made the drunkard angry for knocking his drink away. Hawkes began to swing wildly, which Nichols managed to avoid. His foremost concern was the leader of the cowhands who was not impressed with having their fun stopped by a so-called Good Samaritan. Gutwitt who gave the impression he was the instigator of the discriminative act against Hawkes, stepped up to Nichols, protesting. He began swinging wild punches at the air, which Nichols also simply dodged. When it came to his time to act, the young constable grabbed Hawkes by the ‘scruff of his neck’ and carried the smaller man from the saloon in a hail of laughter by those present. Not a single person moved to aid the drunkard as the law enforcer removed the inebriate sheriff from the shebeen, half carrying, half dragging him outside where he dumped the drunkard in a horse trough by the entrance, leaving him to sober up as he returned to bar to continue his duties. The crowd inside the bar raced to the door or windows to witness the actions of the stranger, but quickly backed away as the tall, thin man re-emerge. Nichols, knowing who Gutwitt was by description he had received prior to departing Philadelphia, took the risk of arresting the mayor before his supporters and hangers-on that thought he was popular, especially when he was buying the drinks for them. Protesting that Nichols had no authority in Jettena Junction, Gutwitt called for the horde present to intervene. Those who thought about it, quickly backtracked when Colonel Thomas Pearce, commander of the Garrison at Fort Buster, stepped into the bar, accompanied by two scores of soldiers, all armed with carbines. They took up a defensive perimeter whilst Pearce addressed Nichols, confirming he had received orders from Governor Packer to assist the special Constable in his duties. Constable Nichols, to the applause of Miss Wright and her delegation, who stood in the doorway, watching, arrested Mayor Gutwitt on charges of corruption, miss-appropriated of town funds and dereliction of his governmental duties. A District Judge was sent from Harrisburg to reside on the case.

Fears that an unbiased jury would not be found, was proven wrong to all when the jury of the Council Peers, made up both men and women, found him and his fellow councilors guilty on all charges. This meant under Pennsylvanian law that Gutwitt and his corrupt local Government could not remain in power, giving the opportunity for Miss Wright to seek election. She won by a landslide, conspicuous triumph, an overwhelming victory, in the election. Her first act was to request that Special Constable Nichols remained in Jettena Junction if he agreed. Scott and his wife, Diane spoke of the change, and they agreed to move to the country on the condition Scott had a free hand in cleaning up Jettena Junction. The Council agreed as long as they were informed of his actions in advance. He agreed.

Now these days, a sober Hawkes spent much of his free time, after cleaning the jailhouse, teaching children to whittle, carve something out of wood, usually something small enough to hold in the hand, by cutting away small pieces of wood. He had a large collection of whittled wood on display in his shack.

Nichols’ first act as town constable was to shut six of the seven saloons and public bars’ claiming the town was not big enough for that many, to the protests of the rowdy folk but to the joys of the respectable people. The one saloon that remained open was opposite the stockyards. The large two-story building was designed by Nichols on ideas he had witnessed in Philadelphia where one side was a public bar for the male customers and cow hands whilst a separate room on the opposite side of the entrance hall was more family friendly, where families could go to enjoy a night out. Slowly, everyone learned that Nichols’ plan was good for the town. There was no further drunkenness on the streets.

The second main law passed was that all weapons from small arms to knives were to be removed from the person before entering the township. There was a slight amendment made for the cowhands of their local cattle drives when they came to town. They were allowed to carry their weapons until the drive was over and the stock was either sold or put on rail cars. Then as the Trail Boss got their pay, the second in-charge would collect all weapons and place them in a lockable box on which it would be delivered to the local jail house for safekeeping till the owner of weapon was leaving, then it would be returned. Anyone who disagreed with these rules was not allowed into town or they faced the threat of being arrested.

A similar rule was allowed for the military when on duty. They could carry their weapons, though, if possible, holstered. When off-duty however, they were forbidden to carry weapons. A comparable rule applied to the local Delaware Tribe of Native Americans. Once Miss Wright’s local Government committee took power, they broke the segregation barriers. In the three years since gaining office, the Wright’s Community Council, abetted by Special Constable Nichols had transformed the wild backward community of Jettena Junction from a violent, unsafe society to a family-oriented culture were everyone was equal. Jobs for associates no longer existed. Everyone had a function in running the town. The Chieftain of the Delaware Tribe, Chief Royce Curtis, joined the council to give his people representation. Many of the tribal families moved from the small island that once was their reservation to live and work within the community, bringing their skills and knowledge to the society. The Children all attended the one school where several classes were operating, depending on the age and knowledge of the child. Sundays was bible classes and Sunday school. Sunday afternoons was market day where everyone brought along items such as food, clothing, or woodwork to sell or barter. It was a family day for all. The violence that once ravished the township was now at a zero rate. The only time the twin cellblock in the jailhouse was used was when Constable Nichols would send someone he believed to intoxicated to ride home, giving them a free room to sober up and a breakfast, which of because he charged a moderate rate, which he in return, returned to the community. This type of behavior was very limited as the public bar was only opened for a few hours a day, four in the afternoon to seven. On a Friday, it remained open until nine. The day of the yearly cattle drive and sale, the license was allowed to remain open late and again on the Saturday. Sundays, it remained closed all day.

Though Fort Buster’s Garrison remained separated from the civilian community, married families ventured their homes from the stockade to the community. Whilst the married men preformed their daily military services, the women and children were able to live a normal live outside the military. Single men of the Garrison remained billeted within the fort.

Once a month, the community came together on a hunting expedition where the small arms of the community came out into the open as the adults and children went out into the plans of the western areas, hunting game. It was not just a mad rush to kill animals but an educational experience where the children learned how to and the safety of the use of weapons, along with the different methods used by both European and Native Americans to hunt.

Once a month, the local Circuit Court Judge would come to town. Gary Perrott, a man of normal features for his age of mid-sixties, stocky built, felt at ease spending a few days of his duties within the community of Jettena Junction. He made sure his arrival occurred on the last Friday of each month. He would spend the morning doing official duties which included reading wills, settling any disputes that might arise, which seldom did, registration of legal documents and any other duties a judge was required to perform. If all went well, Friday afternoon, he would walk the town, speaking to the locals. Saturday, he started early, often before dawn, heading to Lake Sooty, where he would spend the day on the shores of the watercourse fishing. Sunday, he joined the community in their Sunday rituals. Monday it was back to the grindstone as he moved on to the next community to preside.

Jettena Junction was a lucky community with the privilege of having two doctors on duty in the small society with a population of two hundred and ninety-six, which included the hundred Military Personnel.