Trafford Publishing: Savannah Tempest: A Novel

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Savannah Tempest: A Novel

by Edgar W. Butler

319 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); illustrated; catalogue #03-1133; ISBN 1-4120-0765-8; US$26.50, C$31.00, EUR22.00, £15.50

A novel based on historical facts.

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About the Book About the Author Excerpts Catalogue Information

About the Book

Savannah Tempest is a new novel from the second era of two-Savannahs, one free and one oppressed, twisted together from slavery and hammered out through the lives of Jewish fertilizer merchants Ludlow Cohen and Gilbert Wilkins. Compelled to serve as confederate undercover agents with secessionist and Klu Klux Klan member Mike Paine, their lives take a different turn during the turbulent aftermath of the Civil War and the unyielding demand of the Klu Klux Klan organizers to re-enslave Aaron Alpeoria Bradley and Negro freedmen. Without the influence of Eliza Andrews and Amora Conte, Sociologist/Historian and novelist Dr. Edgar W. Butlerʼs gripping story, would be as incomplete as Gone With the Wind without Scarlett OʼHara. Set in 19th century Georgia, this story unfolds among some of the southʼs historic events. While General W. T. Sherman was presenting Savannah to President Lincoln as a Christmas gift, Ludlow Cohen was unknowingly experiencing some relation-ships that would impact the rest of his life and Savannah. The author weaves an arsenal of emotions—fear, hate, love, rage, and forbidden sex, that inflamed the smoldering frustrations of life in post-Civil War Savannah. The book culminates in a duel between Ludlow and Mike Paine, a leader of the Klu Klux Klan. This illustrated book had benefit of the wonderful work of many graphic artists of the era who helped visualize the panorama. Diaries, newspapers, censuses, academic books and articles were utilized in recording authentic words and sentiments of persons from all of these sources.

About the Author

Dr. Edgar W. Butler is the author of Race and the Jury and 15 other books. This volume is dedicated to my critic, challenger, confidant, and friend, the late W. W. Law of Savannah. A renowned historian, preservationist, and symbol of the civil rights struggle, he dedicated his life to fighting injustice.

Excerpts

Prologue

Waking up with a gasp, Ludlow Cohen is drenched in sweat, from head to toe. His forehead feels as if it is on fire. Liquid is dripping from his arms and legs. As he attempts to roll over, the sheets are so slippery from perspiration he slips and falls out of bed onto the hardwood floor. Gathering himself together, he slips back into the soaked bed cowering under the covers; now he is alternately shivering from the cold morning air and burning from the hot body fluids pouring from his body. He must calm down so that he will be alert because at dawn he will be in a duel fighting for his life. He is dreading his impending confrontation with Mike Aiken at first light of the new day. He knows there is no turning back. Did he stumble along the way or was it fate that he and Mike would have to resolve their quarrels by deadly force? How did he get involved in this journey that bought him to this moment of possible death?

Not too long ago life was spontaneous and free in Charleston and then in Savannah. Parties, boat racing, and moonlight romantic dinners made his days and nights carefree. Then the hothead secessionists in Charleston attacked Fort Sumner. His trepidation was how the break with the Union would impact the family business and especially his social life.

Since then his world has gone topsy-turvy and he feels caught up in a whirlwind out of his control. Ludlow reflects that he and his family had little interest in separating

from the Union. They were doing quite well selling bat guano and other fertilizers to the slaveholders on the rice and cotton plantations on the sea-islands of South Carolina. Then he sighs, remembering that he did not really work. He had the pleasant task of leisurely visiting the plantations taking orders for the family business. And since he was an eligible bachelor, at every plantation with a young woman he was very popular and an extremely desirable visitor and dinner companion.

Momentarily forgetting about the duel, he recalls how after secession of the Confederate states from the Union he was forced to become a member of the Confederate army. He is in the army, not out of a feeling of obligation, but because he was informed that he had a choice of becoming an officer in the infantry or reconnoitering the South Carolina and Georgia sea-islands to determine if the Yankees were going to invade them. The obvious option for Ludlow was to enroll as a scout since it would be much the same as he had been doing, traversing the sea-islands. In addition, the danger was minimal.

Headquarters for the reconnaissance unit was in Savannah. Ludlow knew a number of people in the city because of periodic boat races with Savannah residents and he hoped that some of these acquaintances would be in the unit. In particular, Gilbert Wilkins had become a congenial acquaintance and gracious racing rival. Gilbert's family also was in the fertilizer business and the two families had monopolized the sea-island business, Ludlow's family in the South Carolina islands and Gilbert's the Georgia islands. So he assumed that Gilbert would be in the scout unit. Fortunately for him, he was correct. Not so auspicious was that in the same corps was Mike Aiken, Ludlow's dueling adversary at sunup.

The patrol of the sea-islands was similar to his experience before the war except now his responsibility was for all of the Georgia islands. For the first several years, his task was quite pleasurable since no marketing was involved

and he made a number of new connections on the plantations. But before long the war was going badly for the South and Sherman was marching through Georgia at a rapid pace and soon surrounded Savannah. After the Union army had destroyed Atlanta, the residents of Savannah feared the worst. Ludlow was surprised when the rebel army abandoned the city and it was taken without a shot being fired.

As the Confederate army was preparing to flee, Ludlow, Gilbert, and Mike were ordered to remain behind, don civilian clothes, and spy on the Union forces to determine Sherman's next move-would it be to attack Charleston or go South? For them to remain behind and to become spies meant for the first time they could be in mortal danger- undercover agents do not have the protection that combatants do; they might executed as spies if caught. Fortunately for them trio is not caught. Soon the war is over with a resounding Union victory.

All of these memories flood Ludlow’s brain as he contemplates the past. Now, as the sun emerges banishing the night, the deadly combat will be set in motion almost immediately. He thinks, as his seconds had advised him to do, the prudent thing to do is to apologize to Mike, then, all would be forgiven. Little did they know that Mike had no inclination of showing any mercy to him. Mike and his Klansmen had been planning this episode for some time to teach the Union scalawag sympathizers in Savannah a lesson. Thus Ludlow was an ideal target. For his part, Ludlow refused to back down because Mike had badmouthed his love.

Still profusely sweating, Ludlow knows that Mike losing Eliza Andrews to him was only the first grievance Mike had against him. It really made no difference that Mike never had a chance with her but he refused to recognize that truth. Despite being in the Confederate army, Ludlow was not a secessionist. Mike and he had clashed over their contrasting points of view, with Mike constantly proclaiming that Ludlow was a scalawag and a traitor to the South.

Another disparity between them was that Mike believed in the unqualified superiority of the white race and absolute inferiority of the Negro race. Mike was livid when near the end of the Civil War President Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation. Ludlow always found Mike's reasoning peculiar because Mike never owned slaves and had little to do with Negroes. Ludlow wondered how Mike became so rabid anti-Negro person. Perhaps, he thought, it was his cohorts in the Klu Klux Klan that influenced him. Ludlow's relationship with the Negroes, especially that mulatto woman Amora Habersham, and the agitator Aaron Alpeoria Bradley, particularly grated on Mike's nerves. Allowing Amora to establish a school for black children in his carriage house certainly did not endear Ludlow to Mike and his Klan brethren. Finally, Ludlow always beating Mike to the finish in the boat races, that perhaps was the final straw. The sun now bursting forth tells Ludlow that the hour has come, rendering his speculation about the inexorableness of the duel a moot question: it would take place momentarily. As he dresses for the fray, incomprehensibly his mind strays to the day General Sherman was approaching Savannah, giving him momentary relief from the inevitable duel.

Catalogue Information