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(November 21, 1870–May 9, 1936)

Mary Johnston was born in Buchanan, Virginia, the daughter of a Confederate veteran. The eldest of six children, she was schooled at home until the age of sixteen, when her mother's death forced her to take over the management of the Johnston household. The family moved to New York City for a time, and though Johnston later traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East, western Virginia remained her home for most of her life.

Johnston published poetry, short stories, a drama, and even a volume of history, but she was best known as a historical novelist. Her most popular novel,
To Have and to Hold
, set in colonial Jamestown, Virginia, was the country's number one best-seller in 1900. Profits from the book enabled her to build a large country home in Warm Springs, Virginia. In her later years, Johnston turned from writing historical fiction to writing novels that highlighted her feminist and suffragist views.

Critics disagree on the quality of Johnston's work. Some call her plots melodramatic and her characters limited, but others praise her narrative power, as well as her attention to historical detail. Battle descriptions in her Civil War novels are so accurate that one reviewer referred to them as “military history,” rather than fiction.

In this scene from
The Long Roll
, Johnston describes General Stonewall Jackson on the eve of his 1861 campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. In a note to her readers, Johnston explained that the incidents in the book “were actual happenings,” adding that she had “changed the manner but not the substance.”

Fiction:
Drury Randall
(1934),
Miss Delicia Allen
(1933),
Hunting Shirt
(1931),
The Exile
(1927),
The Great Valley
(1926),
The Slave Ship
(1924),
Croatoan
(1923),
1492
(1922),
Silver Cross
(1922),
Sweet Rocket
(1920),
Michael Forth
(1919),
Foes
(1918),
Pioneers of the Old South: A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings
(1918),
The Wanderers
(1917),
The Fortunes of Garin
(1915),
The Witch
(1914),
Hagar
(1913),
Cease Firing
(1912),
The Long Roll
(1911),
Lewis Rand
(1908),
The Goddess of Reason
(1907),
Sir Mortimer
(1904),
Audrey
(1902),
To Have and To Hold
(1900),
Prisoners of Hope, A Tale of Colonial Virginia
(1898).

Dorothy M. Scura, “Mary Johnston,”
American Women Authors
, Vol. 3 (1980), 416–19. Cratis Williams, “The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction,” abridged in
Appalachian Journal
3:3 (spring 1976), 236.

from Chapter VI

It was the middle of July, 1861.

First Brigade headquarters was a tree—an especially big tree—a little removed from the others. Beneath it stood a kitchen chair and a wooden table, requisitioned from the nearest cabin and scrupulously paid for. At one side was an extremely small tent, but Brigadier-General T.J. Jackson rarely occupied it. He sat beneath the tree, upon the kitchen chair, his feet, in enormous cavalry boots, planted precisely before him, his hands rigid at his sides. Here he transacted the business of each day, and here, when it was over, he sat facing the North. An awkward, inarticulate, and peculiar man, with strange notions about his health and other matters, there was about him no breath of grace, romance, or pomp of war. He was ungenial, ungainly, with large hands and feet, with poor eyesight and a stiff address. There did not lack spruce and handsome youths in his command who were vexed to the soul by the idea of being led to battle by such a figure. The facts that he had fought very bravely in Mexico, and that he had for the enemy a cold and formidable hatred were for him; most other things against him. He drilled his troops seven hours a day. His discipline was of the sternest, his censure a thing to make the boldest officer blench. A blunder, a slight negligence, any disobedience of orders—down came reprimand, suspension, arrest, with an iron certitude, a relentlessness quite like Natures. Apparently he was without imagination. He had but little sense of humour, and no understanding of a joke. He drank water and sucked lemons for dyspepsia, and fancied that the use of pepper had caused a weakness in his left leg. He rode a rawboned nag named Little Sorrel, he carried his sabre in the oddest fashion, and said “oblike,” instead of “oblique.” He found his greatest pleasure in going to the Presbyterian Church twice on Sundays and to prayer meetings through the week. Now and then there was a gleam in his eye that promised something, but the battles had not begun, and his soldiers hardly knew what it promised. One or two observers claimed that he was ambitious, but these were chiefly laughed at. To the brigade at large he seemed prosaic, tedious, and strict enough, performing all duties with the exactitude, monotony, and expression of a clock, keeping all plans with the secrecy of the sepulchre, rarely sleeping, rising at dawn, and requiring his staff to do likewise, praying at all seasons, and demanding an implicity of obedience which might have been in order with some great and glorious captain, some idolized Napoleon, but
which seemed hardly the due of the late professor of natural philosophy and artillery tactics at the Virginia Military Institute. True it was that at Harper's Ferry, where, as Colonel T.J. Jackson, he had commanded until Johnston's arrival, he had begun to bring order out of chaos and to weave from a high-spirited rabble of Volunteers a web that the world was to acknowledge remarkable; true, too, that on the second of July, in the small affair with Patterson at Falling Waters, he had seemed to the critics in the ranks not altogether unimposing. He emerged from Falling Waters Brigadier-General T.J. Jackson, and his men, though with some mental reservations, began to call him “Old Jack.” The epithet implied approval, but approval hugely qualified. They might have said—in fact, they did say—that every fool knew that a crazy man could fight!

(May 1, 1830?–November 30, 1930)

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, labor organizer and union gadfly, was born in Ireland in the 1830s. Her father's anti-British activities forced the family to flee to the United States where Jones worked as a schoolteacher in Memphis, and later, as a dressmaker in Chicago. In 1861, she married George E. Jones, an iron molder and staunch unionist.

When a yellow-fever epidemic swept Chicago in 1867, Jones's husband and all four of her children died. Five years later, her home and dressmaking business were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire.

Made homeless by circumstance, she remained homeless by choice, dedicating her life to improving the working conditions of America's laborers. She helped organize rail strikes in Pittsburgh and Birmingham, a textile strike in Philadelphia, and coal strikes in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. When asked where she lived, Jones replied, “Wherever there is a fight.”

Dubbed “Mother” Jones by union members, she grew adept at staging events which garnered national attention, such as a 125-mile march across New Jersey and into New York City to protest the textile industry's exploitation of child workers.

Because of her activities in a 1912 United Mine Workers' strike, Jones, at the age of eighty-two, was labeled “the most dangerous woman in America” by a West Virginia prosecutor who complained, “She comes into a state where peace and prosperity reign…crooks her finger [and] twenty thousand contented men lay down their tools and walk out.”

Sentenced to twenty years in prison by a West Virginia court, Mother Jones was pardoned by the governor after the U.S. Senate threatened an investigation.

Her autobiography retains a great deal of the passion that made her such an effective orator. Although critics contend that her memory for dates
was suspect, most agree her writings offer an invaluable look behind the scenes at the struggles of American workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The following excerpt is from
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
, published near the end of Jones's life.

Books:
The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones
(1988), ed. Edward M. Steel.
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
(1985), ed. Edward M. Steel.
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
(1925), ed. Mary Field Parton.

Helen M. Brannan, “Mary Harris Jones,”
American Women Writers
(1980), 422–24. Elliott J. Gorn,
Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America
(2001). Joseph Gustaitis, “Mary Harris Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman,”
American History Illustrated
(22 Jan. 1988), 22–23. Edward M. Steel, ed.
The Court-Martial of Mother Jones
(1995).

Chapter III: A Strike in Virginia

It was about 1891 when I was down in Virginia. There was a strike in the Dietz mines and the boys had sent for me. When I got off the train at Norton a fellow walked up to me and asked me if I were Mother Jones.

“Yes, I am Mother Jones.”

He looked terribly frightened. “The superintendent told me that if you came down here he would blow out your brains. He said he didn't want to see you ‘round these parts.”

“You tell the superintendent that I am not coming to see him anyway. I am coming to see the miners.”

As we stood talking a poor fellow, all skin and bones, joined us.

“Do you see those cars over there, Mother, on the siding?” He pointed to the cars filled with coal.

“Well, we made a contract with the coal company to fill those cars for so much, and after we had made the contract, they put lower bottoms in the cars, so that they would hold another ton or so. I have worked for this company all my life and all I have now is this old worn-out frame.”

We couldn't get a hall to hold a meeting. Every one was afraid to rent to us. Finally the colored people consented to give us their church for our meeting. Just as we were about to start the colored chairman came to me and said: “Mother, the coal company gave us this ground that the church is on. They have sent word that they will take it from us if we let you speak here.”

I would not let those poor souls lose their ground so I adjourned the meeting to the four corners of the public roads. When the meeting was over and the people had dispersed, I asked my co-worker, Dud Hado, a fellow from Iowa, if he would go with me up to the post office. He was a kindly soul but easily frightened.

As we were going along the road, I said, “Have you got a pistol on you?”

“Yes,” said he, “I'm not going to let any one blow your brains out.”

“My boy,” said I, “it is against the law in this county to carry concealed weapons. I want you to take that pistol out and expose a couple of inches of it.”

As he did so about eight or ten gunmen jumped out from behind an old barn beside the road, jumped on him and said, “Now we've got you, you
dirty organizer.” They bullied us along the road to the town and we were taken to an office where they had a notary public and we were tried. All those blood-thirsty murderers were there and the general manager came in.

“Mother Jones, I am astonished,” said he.

“What is your astonishment about?” said I.

“That you should go into the house of God with anyone who carries a gun.”

“Oh, that wasn't God's house,” said I. “That is the coal company's house. Don't you know that God Almighty never comes around to a place like this!”

He laughed and of course, the dogs laughed, for he was the general manager.

They dismissed any charges against me and they fined poor Dud twenty-five dollars and costs. They seemed surprised when I said I would pay it. I had the money in my petticoat.

I went over to a miner's shack and asked his wife for a cup of tea. Often in these company-owned towns the inn-keepers were afraid to let me have food. The poor soul was so happy to have me there that she excused herself to “dress for company.” She came out of the bedroom with a white apron on over her cheap cotton wrapper.

One of the men who was present at Dud's trial followed me up to the miner's house. At first the miner's wife would not admit him but he said he wanted to speak privately to Mother Jones. So she let him in.

“Mother,” he said, “I am glad you paid that bill so quickly. They thought you'd appeal the case. Then they were going to lock you both up and burn you in the coke ovens at night and then say that you had both been turned loose in the morning and they didn't know where you had gone.”

Whether they really would have carried out their plans I do not know. But I do know that there are no limits to which powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery.