As they prepared to leave, Paul reminded them about their promises to him. “Remember, I have your word, this does not get discussed with anyone!”
They could do nothing except to nod their heads in agreement to what he had just told them. They both wanted to be a part of the entire ride, all the way to the end, no matter how it ended.
Summer, 1863
16
Ambushed.
“Tell General Hancock for me that I have done him and
you all an injury which I shall regret . . .”
Brigadier General Lewis Addison Armistead, CSA, at Gettysburg
The war had raged along the east coast for over two years and during that time so many men had died. Often their lives had been wasted in battle due to the poor military tactics employed by some of their inept commanders. Despite their many years of military service, despite their experiences in previous military conflicts, and despite the lessons learned in earlier battles in this Great War, far too many generals, as well as many of their subordinate commanders, had continued to slaughter their men using frontal attacks upon the enemy, even when the enemy had held the secure and fortified positions. It was a waste of a generation of men. The waste of lives would be no different for those men, both grey and blue, who would waste their own lives trying to steal the gold and silver from Captain Francis and his men.
Francis had been asleep for only two hours when he was woken by the voice. It was the voice in his nightmare, the voice of Sgt. Hatfield screaming out his name as a doctor was amputating his broken leg. Waking up startled, he could sense his heart was beating loud and fast; his head was drenched in sweat. He was terrified, believing it was real and not a dream, then relieved, but still somewhat panicked when he realized he had only been dreaming. As he sat there in the dark barn calming himself down, the only light present was what the cracks in the sides of the barn allowed in from the full moon. Sitting there as he calmed down, he wondered if he had woken any of his men when he had been startled out of his sleep by his reoccurring dream. Looking around he saw his men were still fast asleep.
Lying back down on his blanket, he was thankful for the hay which had been present in the barn as it had given him his first soft cushion to sleep on in weeks. He had almost fallen back to sleep when he heard the first noise. Seconds later he heard it again. At first he thought the noise was probably caused by mice foraging for food, but then as he lay there he saw the first figure creep across the barn’s overhead hay loft. Francis’ tired mind, clouded by the still present thoughts of his dream, and of his lack of sleep, was still not processing what it was he was seeing. Confused still, he wondered why one of his men was up in the loft. “Who is that up there and what could he possibly be doing?”
Then he saw the second figure creep across the hay loft directly above where he had been sleeping. The light from the full moon now also shown through the open hay loft door off to his left, fifteen feet above the barn’s dirt floor. It was the open hay loft door which brought Francis to his senses as he realized he had closed the door when he inspected the barn before lying down for the night. Now he realized the men he was watching were not his, but likely men who had come to claim the gold and silver for themselves. Absorbing what was unfolding above him, Francis realized he likely had only a couple of minutes to react to the threat they were now facing. He did not know who these men were, nor did he care, but he knew what they had come for.
Holding his saber in his injured left hand, and with his pistol stuck in his waistband, Francis crept closer to where Sgt. Davis was asleep, only a few feet away from where he had been sleeping a few moments earlier. As he slowly moved towards Davis, the snoring of some of his men masked the sound he made as he moved across the dirt floor. As he did so, he could see one of the intruders trying to peer down at them in the dimly lit barn. The light from the moon allowed him to see the men as they crept across the hay loft, but the moonlight only illuminated the loft and not the barn floor. It had given him a tactical advantage, one he was about to exploit to his benefit.
As he crept closer to where Davis still was fast asleep, Francis saw two more men slowly creep across the hay loft above him. In moments they joined the first two men near the top of the stairs, stairs which led from the hay loft to the barn floor. “They are likely gathering their courage to come and get us.” Knowing he had to act quickly, he reached out and firmly placed his right hand over the mouth of the sleeping Sgt. Davis.
Whispering into his right ear, his hand still covering Davis’ mouth, Francis woke him up. “Davis, it’s me Francis. Do not make a sound, just look up at the top of the stairs. Do you see them? There are four of them. They came in through the hayloft door.” Now he took his hand off of Davis’ mouth. “I think they are coming to get the gold and silver, so we need to be ready. We only have a couple of seconds. Is your musket loaded?”
“Yes.” It was the only word Davis softly uttered.
Francis then whispered his instructions to him. “Let them start down the stairs. When they do, I want you to shoot the last man in line. Make it count!”
It only took a moment before they saw the four men above them slowly start to move. Seeing the men starting down the stairs, Francis first, and then Davis, slowly positioned themselves so they could fire their weapons. As they did, and as the last of the four men had started to come down the stairs a couple of steps, Francis sprang to his feet. With the faint light of the moon as his only available light, he fired his pistol at the third man in line. His shot struck the intended target and the intruder immediately fell dead, his lifeless body tumbling down the stairs.
Within a moment of Francis firing his weapon, Davis did the same, striking the last man in line with a well placed shot to the chest. Like the intruder Francis had shot, he also fell forward down the stairs. The chaos caused by the two unsuspecting shots, coupled by the two men falling down the stairs upon them, caused one of the two remaining men to be knocked off the stairs onto the barn’s dirt floor. The first intruder in line, distracted by the shots Francis and Davis had fired, momentarily turned around to look at his comrades who had been shot. When he turned back to see where the shots had come from, he quickly realized the fatal mistake he had made. In looking back at his comrades, he had taken his eyes off the barn floor. Doing so had allowed Francis to quickly be on top of him.
Now on his feet, Francis charged at the last man on the stairs. Reaching him, he ran his saber clean through the man’s stomach, catching him off guard and with no time to react to the saber’s thrust. Now gasping as the saber was pulled back out of his stomach, the first intruder dropped his musket and fell down the final two steps to the barn’s dirt floor. Almost immediately the injured intruder clutched his stomach in agony. The intruder who had been knocked off of the steps by his dead friends falling on him was now crying out in pain as he had received a strong kick to the face. By kicking him in the face, Sgt. Davis had made sure this intruder was no longer a threat to them.
The gunshots fired by Davis and Francis quickly woke the other men from their deep sleep. As experienced soldiers would, they immediately reached for their muskets as they reacted to the gunshots they had heard. Their next reaction was to respond to any threats still present. As they did, Francis loudly yelled to them, ordering them not to fire their weapons. Seeing his men had responded well to his order, he realized it was only through the Lord’s blessing no one else was shot in the panic of the moment. Now in the darkness, Samuel lit two lanterns, bringing more light into the dark barn.
Ever alert for danger, Francis then made sure no one else was present in the barn. “Stine and Griffin, both of you get up into the loft and check for anyone who might be hiding, but be careful!” Checking the loft they found no one else hiding there. They saw no one outside when they looked out the hay loft’s open door.
After the hay loft had been checked, Francis grabbed the long hair of the intruder whose f
ace had been partially rearranged by the kick from Sgt. Davis. He now sought to know if others were lurking outside the barn waiting to ambush them. Through a busted lip, and now minus several teeth, the intruder first spit out a mouthful of blood onto the dirt floor before he answered. “No, sir, ain’t no others out there, Captain Francis.”
Francis was momentarily taken back by the answer he heard. Then he asked more of the injured soldier. “How can I believe you? How do you know my name? Do I know you?” Stunned by the injured soldier calling him by his name, he still clenched the intruder’s long hair in his injured left hand. Now he bent over to look closer at whom it was he was interrogating. The injured man looked vaguely familiar, but he could not recall where he had seen his face. It quickly became clear.
“Captain, look at these two dead boys here!” Francis turned to see Davis standing next to two dead intruders. “These here boys are them North Carolina boys. You know, them soldiers who helped us load the wagons onto the train the other day. Remember? The wagon fell off the ramp and broke, and the gold fell onto the ground. These are them two same boys y’all told to stay away from the gold or you’d shoot them. Well, I guess ya gone and fulfilled that promise. Not like you’d thought you’d do, but ya dun shot them as y’all said ya would. These Tar Heels boys, and them other two with them, likely thought they could catch us sleeping and get some easy money. Guess they didn’t think y’all was gonna be awake in the middle of the night. Too bad for them, I guess.”
Francis quickly scanned the faces of the dead soldiers who now lay nearby on the barn floor. He vaguely recognized one of the two when he held one of the lanterns close to their faces. He then turned to look back at the soldier he had run his saber through. The dying man wore the tattered remnants of a Confederate soldier’s uniform. The soldier was now curled up in a fetal position as he screamed out in pain, his stomach burning from the internal laceration caused by the saber. The dirt floor was now stained with the injured soldier’s blood. Francis looked at the other dead soldier lying nearby; strangely he was wearing the uniform of Union soldier.
“Captain, it hurts real bad! Please, please help me. We did not mean no harm to y’all. We just wanted some gold and some food. We ain’t ate much lately!”
Francis stood silently over the dying soldier, the soldier’s pleas for help falling on deaf ears. “Tell me what I want to know and perhaps I may get you some help. Whose idea was this? How did you know where to find us?”
The soldier’s pain was intensifying from the internal damage done by the saber, but Francis stoically stood there, showing no remorse for what he had done. Impatiently he waited for a response from the dying soldier. Through his painful gasps for air, the soldier tried to answer him. “Captain, I swear to you, it were not my fault this all happened. It was all Smitty’s idea, I was just hungry. I swear to you. You dun killed him it looks, but I swear it were his idea, the whole thing. Ain’t nobody else outside waiting on y’all. It was just us. We been following y’all for a couple of days since we dun seen them gold bars fell out of the wagon. We just been waiting for the right time, that’s all. I suspect we dun guessed wrong. I’m real sorry for the trouble we caused y’all. Captain, can y’all please help me with the pain? It hurts real bad now!”
Sergeants Stine and Griffin, who had called into the barn after checking the area outside, were let back inside through the barn’s two main doors. After glancing at the dead bodies of two intruders, they told Francis what they had found. “Captain, them boys got up into the loft using a ladder we found leaning against the barn. Likely stole it from someplace close to here. We also found four horses tied to a tree just the other side of the railroad tracks. Ain’t nobody else out there though.” Finished telling Francis what they had found outside, and with a look of disgust on his face, Stine spit a mouthful of tobacco juice on the shirt of the soldier curled up on the barn floor. Like the others, he had little use for traitors.
Francis then noticed the railroad stationmaster, as well as William McGuire and four other men, standing in the barn’s open doorway. They had all been woken from their sleep by the sound of shots being fired. He could tell they all seemed too afraid to venture further inside the barn.
Standing off to the side of his men, an angry Francis yelled loudly for all to hear. “These men were soldiers once. Three were once our brothers in arms and one was our enemy. No longer are they either our brothers or our enemy, they are now just simple thieves. They have tried to kill my men and me, and they have tried to rob the Confederacy of what is needed to sustain our cause. They have tried to rob us of what we desperately need to fight the damn Yankees with. Damn each of these men to eternity!” Still seething anger, Francis strode to one of the side walls of the barn and grabbed a long length of rope that was hanging there. Throwing it to the ground where the two injured soldiers now lay, he yelled to his men. “Hang them damn it! Hang them right now from these very rafters. They do not deserve our mercy!”
The two injured soldiers had less time to cry out in protest than they had to react when they had been injured by Francis and Sgt. Davis. Ignoring their pleas for mercy and forgiveness, they were brusquely grabbed off the barn floor by Francis’ men. Within moments they each were placed on a horse with their hands tied behind their backs. With quickly tied nooses placed around their necks, and without any ceremony or additional words being spoken, they were hung from two rafters in the barn. Rafters which helped to support the hay loft they had crept across before their ill conceived plan went bad. At first, their feet danced in the air desperately trying to grab at something that was not there. In less than two minutes they were both dead.
Looking back at the men standing near the opened barn door, Francis hollered to them. “You men there, know these soldiers are traitors to our cause. Let them hang here for others to see what happens to traitors, then do as you please with their bodies, but shed no tears for them as they are not brave soldiers like my men. They are just traitors! I care not what happens to them.”
Francis had just done what was expected of him. He had protected his men and he had helped to protect the future of the Confederacy. He once had taken an oath to do just that. He knew he had helped to kill four men who had tried to kill them, but despite reacting as he should have, he had found no pleasure in killing these men. “When will this terrible war, one which makes men do such crazy things, be over with?” It was a question all of his men would ask themselves many more times in the coming weeks.
******
Shortly after the sun rose the lifeless bodies of the two soldiers still hung from the barn rafters. They hung there in full view of those townspeople who came to see what had taken place during the night. While the bodies still hung inside the barn, the train finally arrived at the Florence train station. Soon Francis and his men were again focused on their mission and they began loading the train’s rail cars with the wagons, horses, and with the small amount of remaining supplies they could still carry.
With the train’s arrival, Francis learned new information regarding the movements of Union troops in the Carolinas. News first came from the train’s brakeman, James Reilly, a disabled soldier from Georgia who had lost most of his right leg earlier in the war during fighting in the first battle of Bull Run. Reilly spoke of Union troops being seen both west and northwest of Florence. He also told Francis that many people were now speculating the Union troops were planning to attack Confederate strongholds in western South Carolina, including Columbia. It was speculation that could not be confirmed as most of the telegraph lines have either been cut or damaged. “Captain, them Yankees are coming soon. We gave them hell at Bull Run and I hope you boys can do the same if y’all get the chance. I’d like to come with y’all, but this dang leg just don’t work right any longer.” Francis was glad to hear the news Reilly gave him as it helped him know where units of the Union army had been recently seen. The news also told him their presence posed a s
erious threat to the success of his mission.
As he thanked Reilly for both the news he brought them, and for his service to the Confederacy, another soldier who had been on the train, Captain William Baldwin, from the 15th South Carolina Infantry Unit, brought more news concerning Union troop movements. Baldwin claimed three days ago, while in Richmond seeking much needed supplies for several of South Carolina’s infantry units, he had heard about a Union army telegraph message being intercepted. “From what I was told, part of the telegraph documented Union cavalry movements south through eastern Tennessee. I heard they were being supported by some unknown infantry division as well. Supposedly they were headed to Columbia, South Carolina from there. The guess was they were going to give their armies free reign in creating havoc there as pay back for starting the war. I’m not sure everything I was told was factual or if it was a rumor, but they are coming, that I know to be a fact.”
As he had done with Reilly, Francis also thanked Baldwin for the news he brought him. “Captain, I cannot speak to you about our mission, but I can tell you the news you have told me is most distressing. I fear what the future will bring, not only to my men and me, but to the Confederacy as a whole. If these Union troops are soon to be as far south as you have told me, and if they are not challenged by our troops immediately, we may soon be doomed as a nation.”
Now more than ever Francis knew he had to get to the relative safety of Charleston. Once there he could either gather additional help to move the money to Atlanta, or he could possibly ship it south by boat, but he had to get to Charleston before the presence of Union troops threatened the area.
The train pulled out of the station as soon as the wagons and horses had been loaded. Slowly the train, one of the few still operating for the North Eastern Railroad, began to move them south towards Cades, South Carolina. As the train moved along the tracks, Francis prayed it was also moving them further away from the Union army. As his men rested from their ordeal back in the barn, and from loading the train under the already steaming South Carolina morning sun, Francis and Baldwin stood together by the side of one of the rail cars. They spent time talking of the war’s progress and of what they both had experienced during the war. The two Confederate officers were homesick by now and they expressed frustration to each other about the war lingering for far too long. Both were in agreement about the end of the war. It was an ending which was not yet in sight.
Confederate Gold and Silver Page 26
