Silent Thunder (20 page)

To the nearly four and a half million black people living in the North and South, the Civil War was a war about slavery, a war they wanted to fight. But white folks had other ideas. Many thought slavery was not the issue at all. They called it “a white man's war” and believed that African Americans had no business in it.

But the black men and women of the time refused to sit back and let this war, whose outcome they felt directly affected their lives, be fought without them. When the Union began to accept black people into its army, young, brave men were eager to take up arms. By the time the Civil War ended in 1865, nearly 180,000 African Americans had served.

Silent Thunder. A Civil War Story
is fiction built on a foundation of facts. The Parnell family, the Parnell slaves, and their neighbors are my own creation, but many of the incidents surrounding their lives are based on real events.

The town of Hobbs Hollow is also fictional, but it is based on actual small towns in the state of Virginia. As was true in the 1860s, I have attempted to show
how, even under the shroud of slavery, the lives of black people and white people were often stitched together like the threads and patches of an intricate quilt.

The Civil War battles in
Silent Thunder
, and the dates on which these battles occurred, are real. Also true is the occurrence of grave snatchers stealing the bodies of dead soldiers for study at a medical school in Winchester, Virginia.

During the Civil War, people looked to newspapers for updates on the war's progress.
Harper's Weekly
was one of the most widely read news journals of the time. Similarly, several newspapers were created by free blacks, with the purpose of providing those African Americans who could read with a black perspective on the events of the day. The New Orleans newspaper
L'Union
, and the “Men of my blood!” article, published on December 6,1862, did exist

A portion of Rosco and Clem's escape route-sailing up the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore with the help of a Quaker man; riding in a dinghy toward colored barn lights on the shore—is based on documented accounts from Harriet Tubman's many trips along the Underground Railroad.

President Abraham Lincoln did create a draft of his Emancipation Proclamation, which was originally presented to Congress on September 22, 1862. From that time, right up until the final document was issued on January I, 1863, there was tremendous speculation and debate about it.

The formal Emancipation Proclamation was indeed read at Tremont Temple, in Boston. Frederick Douglass, the noted black abolitionist leader, a former slave who devoted his life to the fight for equal rights, attended the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation before a crowd of nearly three thousand black people who were holding a vigil, waiting for news that the president had signed his name to the document.

Though many of us who write historical fiction take great care in researching the day-to-day details and the political events of bygone eras, we can never fully know the true impact these events had on the souls of those who lived them.

We can never know the degrading injustice of having to hide one's desire to read—of being shackled with the burden of illiteracy.

We can never know the sting of tears shed for family members sold off at auction.

We can never know the intense yearning for freedom that burned in the hearts of so many enslaved people.

It is only through books that we can glimpse the joys and sufferings experienced by those who came before us. And it is through these same books that we can look to the past to gain insight into the future, so that the history buffs of tomorrow can shape the events of history today.

Andrea Davis Pinkney
July 1998
New York City

I
CONSULTED MANY BOOKS
on the Civil War period for the creation of this novel. The following are those I found most helpful, those I referred to several times over. I cite them here with tremendous gratitude for the men and women who wrote them:

Foner, Philip S.
The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Volume III, The Civil War 1861–1865.
International Publishers Co. Inc., New York: 1952.

Gorsline, Douglas.
What People Wore: A Visual History of Dress from Ancient Times to the Early Twentieth Century.
Dover Publications, Mineola, New York: 1980.

Haskins, Jim.
Black, Blue & Gray: African Americans in the Civil War.
Simon & Schuster, New York: 1998.

Haskins, Jim.
Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad.
Scholastic, New York: 1993.

Igus, Toyomi, ed.
Book of Black Heroes, Volume Two: Great Women in the Struggle.
Just Us Books, Orange, New Jersey: 1991.

Lester, Julius.
To Be a Slave.
Dial Books, New York: 1968.

McFeely, William S.
Frederick Douglass.
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York: 1991.

Mellon, James, ed.
Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember, an Oral History.
Weidenfeld & Nicholson, New York: 1988.

Meltzer, Milton, ed.
Frederick Douglass: In His Own Words.
Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995: San Diego, California: 1995.

Meltzer, Milton, ed.
Lincoln: In His Own Words.
Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995: San Diego, California: 1993.

National Park Service.
The Underground Railroad.
US. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.: 1998.

Taylor, M. W.
Harriet Tubman.
Chelsea House Publishers, New York: 1991.

Trudeau, Noah Andre.
Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War 1862–1865.
Little, Brown & Company, Boston: 1998.