R.K. Smith
BLACKWATER:
Lincoln's War in West Florida
BLACKWATER:
Lincoln's War in West Florida
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."
- Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley
Washington, August 22, 1862.
So the war was not primarily about slavery. Lincoln was interested in preserving the union so that he would continue to have the financial resources of the South to run the government.
Blackwater also tells the story of John Geoghegan and how he became a successful blockade runner out of Pensacola Bay. It's the story of Maria Moreno, the Spanish beauty whom John loves and almost loses. Further, it is the story of John's friend, Ben Jernigan, who is engaged to French-educated Amanda Rucker. Ben has no interest in the war, so he hides in the Yellow River swamp to avoid conscription. But he finds himself drawn out to help his friend, Caleb, a slave who has killed in self-defense. He gets Amanda and her friends out of Milton, Florida, and finally leaves the Southern ruins with John and his friends on his ship, the Carolina.
Coming Soon!
COMMENTS
AUTHOR'S NOTES
The historical background of Blackwater is essentially factual. The characters and their actions are fictional. Cedar Grove is fictional as is the Clayton Family who lived there in the story. I trust that my fictional account of the period depicted in the story fairly represents the hardships inflicted on the people in the Pensacola Bay area during and after the War of Southern Independence; was a war that could have been avoided. Conventional wisdom has always been that the Union blockades could not be run out of Pensacola Bay. I think not. Of course, my accounts of how it could be done are fictional.
The war for Southern Independence was not about the Union freeing the slaves. It seems few white Americans, North or South, were overly concerned about the status of the enslaved black people. As set forth here in Lincoln, disregarding the Constitution, attacked the Southern States to force them to stay in the Union. Even though the Southern States withdraw, Lincoln would not allow it. The so-called “Great Emancipator” caused hundreds of thousands of people to be killed for reasons that had nothing to do with slavery. The reasons are explained herein.