by Alison Hart
On July 30 of that year, while Saratoga Springs was preparing for the races, the bloody Battle of the Crater was raging in Petersburg, Virginia. The attack turned out to be a failure for the North. The Union lost 3,393 soldiers. The Confederates lost 1,500. After the battle, Abraham Lincoln declared the first Thursday of August (August 4, 1864) as a Day of Prayer. In his proclamation he stated the hope that “unity and fraternity may be restored and peace established throughout all our borders.” On that date in Saratoga Springs, however, the war seemed far away. Crowds overflowed the grandstand of the Saratoga Race Course, and, instead of praying, the ladies and gentlemen in attendance cheered for their favorite horses.
Fire!
In the 1800s, most homes, hotels, and shops were built of wood. They were also heated with wood stoves. Barns were made of wood and filled with hay and straw. Fires were common and often deadly. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 killed 300 people and burned some 17,450 buildings.
In July of 1864, shortly before Gabriel’s fictional visit to Saratoga Springs, fireworks set off a blaze on the rear porch of a store. Buildings along two hundred feet of Broadway burned, including a blacksmith shop, a soap factory, and an ice house. Later, fires destroyed two Saratoga Springs landmarks—the United States Hotel in 1865, and Congress Hall in 1866.
Horse-drawn pumper wagon decorated for a parade Early fires such as the one at the racetrack stables in the story were often doused by bucket brigades—lines of men and women passing buckets of water from hand to hand. By the time of the Civil War, some larger cities in the United States had fire hydrants and steam pumpers to control fires. Some towns depended on hand pumpers. Firefighters pulled the fire engine near the burning building, then filled a tub with water. They rapidly pushed two handles up and down to pump water from the tub through the heavy hose. A bucket brigade had to work constantly to keep the tub full. The water could only squirt a short distance, so fire engines needed to be very close to the flames.
Note: The quote from Joseph Holt and Thomas Butler as well as the orders concerning refugees from June 1864 and September 1864 came from Richard Sears’s book, Camp Nelson, Kentucky. The quote from the travel brochure is taken from Saratoga Lost. The quote from Abraham Lincoln appeared in his Day of Prayer proclamation (Proclamation for a Day of Prayer. July 7, 1864. By the President of the United States of America).
Bibliographical Note
TO RESEARCH AND WRITE the RACING TO FREEDOM Trilogy, I read over two hundred books. The following sources were especially important for GABRIEL’S TRIUMPH:
BOOKS
Calderone, John A. History of Fire Engines. FAJ Publications: 1997.
Del Vecchio, Mike. Railroads Across America. MBI Publishing Company: 1998
Harter, Jim. American RR of the Nineteenth Century. Texas Tech University Press: 1998.
Hollingsworth, Kent. The Kentucky Thoroughbred. The University Press of Kentucky: 1976.
Hotaling, Edward. Great Black Jockeys. Forum; Rockling, CA: 1999.
Hotaling, Edward. They’re Off! Horse Racing at Saratoga. Syracuse University Press: 1995.
Joki, Robert. Saratoga Lost: Images of Victorian America. Black Dome Press: 1998
Lucas, Marion B. A History of Kentucky: From Slavery to Segregation, 1760–1891. Kentucky Historical Society: 2003.
Lucas, Scott J. “High Expectations: African Americans in Civil War Kentucky.” Negro History Bulletin: Jan/Dec: 2001.
Renau, Lynn S. Racing Around Kentucky. Antiques Consultant Inc. Louisville, KY: 1995.
Sears, Richard D. Camp Nelson, Kentucky. The University Press of Kentucky: 2002.
WEBSITES
www.saratoga.org
www.campnelson.org
www.kyhistory.org
About the Author
ALISON HART enjoys writing about history and horses, two of her favorite subjects. “I’d love to go back in time,” she says, “and meet people like Gabriel who followed their dreams, no matter what the hardships.” Researching GABRIEL’S TRIUMPH took her to the Bluegrass region of Kentucky and its rich Thoroughbred racing and Civil War history. She soon realized that the suspenseful story of Gabriel and his family wouldn’t fit in one book. The other titles in the Racing to Freedom trilogy are GABRIEL’S HORSES and the upcoming GABRIEL’S JOURNEY.
Ms. Hart, a teacher and author, has written more than twenty books for children and young adults. Many of her titles—including ANNA’S BLIZZARD, an IRA Teacher’s Choice and WILLA Finalist, and SHADOW HORSE, an Edgar Nominee—feature horses. Her historical mystery FIRES OF JUBILEE is also set at the time of the Civil War.
Published by
PEACHTREE PUBLISHERS
1700 Chattahoochee Avenue
Atlanta, Georgia 30318-2112
www.peachtree-online.com
Text © 2007 by Alison Hart
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover design by Loraine M. Joyner
Print book design by Melanie McMahon Ives
Photo credits: Union army wagon drivers, courtesy of the Library of Congress; Black families at Camp Nelson, courtesy of the National Archives; Horse-drawn pumper wagon, courtesy of the Historian’s Office at Hilton, NY.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print editions as follows:
Hart, Alison, 1950–
Hart, Alison, 1950–
Gabriel’s triumph / by Alison Hart. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: A thirteen-year-old newly freed slave faces the challenges of freedom and horse racing as he pursues his dream of becoming a famous jockey in Civil War Kentucky and New York.
ISBN 978-1-56145-410-5 / 1-56145-410-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-56145-547-8 / 1-56145-547-4 (trade paperback)
[1. Jockeys—Fiction. 2. Horse racing—Fiction. 3. Freedmen—Fiction. 4. African American—Fiction. 5. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H256272Gd 2007
[Fic]—dc22
2007001430
