Читать книгу Point of Honor - Robert N. Macomber - Страница 6

We’re sailing with Lt. Peter Wake again. He is in his second year with the East Gulf Blockading Squadron and facing a multitude of professional and personal dilemmas afloat and ashore. Peter Wake is not the same man who arrived in Key West from New England as a volunteer naval officer in May of 1863. Like the rest of the nation, Peter Wake has been through too much to ever be the same.

The war, sadly, is far from over. It is now the spring of 1864, and everyone, in both the North and the South, has given up hope for a quick end to the bloodshed. Indeed, throughout the Northern states the sickening litany of casualty lists is producing second thoughts for many citizens about the wisdom of continuing to force the South to stay in the Union. If they want to leave the Union that badly then let them go, some are saying. Does the nation have the will to stay the course and win total victory? National politicians are debating that very thing.

On the other side of the conflict, the Southerners are exhausted. They are fighting because they must defend their home soil, but the enthusiasm is gone, along with the naïve hope of formal recognition by Great Britain and France. Too much of the Confederacy has been captured, too many thousands of men killed and wounded, too many homes and towns destroyed for anyone to feel they will have a total victory. By now they are hoping for a partial gain of some manner of independence, at least a grudging cessation of the hostilities so the Yankees will just go away. Some sort of agreement is hoped for so the people of Georgia and Tennessee and Virginia can return to a semblance of peace and try to rebuild what they have lost.

Florida is in an ironic position by 1864. Previously considered a nice but nonessential sibling in the sisterhood of Confederate states, Florida is the South’s sole remaining largely unconquered food-producing region east of the Mississippi, the main breadbasket for the large Rebel armies fighting the Federal forces in Georgia and Tennessee. Beef, in particular, is Florida’s most important contribution to the Confederate war effort, and thousands of head of cattle are shipped northward by priority rail each month.

Florida’s coastline is still somewhat important, with hidden places remaining where the occasional small Rebel blockade runner can bring out small quantities of cotton and run in equally small shipments of foreign munitions and manufactured goods. These runs are not productive enough to matter much in the overall war but do influence local events in the peninsula. Generally speaking, however, the U.S. Navy has made blockade running on the Florida coast much more dangerous than it was the previous year.

In fact, the navy has been instrumental in transforming its efforts in Florida from a backwater blockade to an offensive invasion at several points along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Working closely with the army authorities, naval operations have succeeded in enabling Union forces to break up the food production capabilities in different areas of Florida. More substantial invasions to capture the heart of the state are being thrust ashore against numerically weaker Confederate defenders.

But with all that effort and naval support, Tallahassee remains the only Confederate state capital east of the Mississippi not captured during the conflict. Each time the Federal forces have tried to get close, they have been defeated by a ragtag rabble of the frontier Floridian home guard along with some regular Confederate army units that have been moved back into the state.

This is the situation that Peter Wake faces as he leads men through the inhumanity and confusion of war. The conflict becomes continually more complicated. This year of the war will find Wake making decisions at sea that will bring him the unwelcome attention of his superiors and decisions ashore that will have profound risks. Wake will also have to make bittersweet decisions of the heart. But no matter what, Wake will remain steadfast, and his decisions will be made based upon that most simple point of character he has ingrained deep in his soul: honor.

Come aboard. The anchor’s hove short, and the sails are unfurled. It’s time to get under way. There’s a war on and we’re needed out there.

Your most humble servant,

Robert N. Macomber