Praise for John Jakes’s Charleston
“Sure to lure readers…[a] masterly tale…[an] extraordinary family…during the most violent era of Charleston’s history.”
—The Washington Post
“John Jakes has been called the ‘godfather of historical novelists,’ and his latest novel, Charleston, combines those elements he knows so well: the cruel conflicts within a family, revenge mixed with love, and a family intrigue that stretches across sweeping historical events…a great read…fascinating historical anecdotes…well worth burning the late-night oil to enjoy.”
—The Charleston Post and Courier
“For a combination of American history and an entertaining story, it’s hard to surpass John Jakes…. Jakes fills his story with the rich details and little snippets of history that keep the pages turning in this five-hundred-page novel.”
—The Sunday Oklahoman
“The author focuses on all levels of Southern society—the belles at their balls, the cowards and patriots—and shapes vengeance and melodrama with great force…. Popular historical fiction at its most readable.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Captivating…. A review can’t adequately describe the sweeping scope of Charleston and the many characters that Jakes weaves together to tell his tale. The book is a great read and a wonderful escape.”
—The Chattanooga Times
“The author, considered by many to be America’s greatest writer of historical fiction, makes Charleston, SC, and its people come alive in a story that spans from the American Revolution through the rise and fall of the Confederacy.”
—The Stuart News/Port St. Lucie News
“A dark tapestry of betrayal, revenge, and murder…. Fans of Jakes’s earlier hits should find plenty of drama and antebellum flavor in this lusty epic.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Jakes’s attention to historical detail is ever present, and readers will emerge from this tale knowing Charleston, and the United States, better than they previously had…. Through war, love, murder, heroism, and deception, Jakes unveils one of the South’s most fascinating locales as it sheds the chains of the past and emerges into the modern world.”
—Tulsa World
“A fascinating history in humanized terms, something Jakes does masterfully and accessibly…. It is the action of this roiling history—loyalist against patriot, Confederate and Unionist, white and black alike—that will ignite the imagination of most readers…and place this novel high on bestseller lists. Readers will discover along the way, however, that they are learning some genuine history in painless ways. And not just in the broad outline, but in hundreds of small details…. Thank you, John Jakes.”
—The State (Columbia, SC)
“Jakes is one of our finest storytellers, and his passion for historical accuracy makes him one of our most authentic, as well. With the gifts he has demonstrated in such classics as the North and South Trilogy, California Gold, and On Secret Service, he paints an unforgettable portrait of the most beautiful city in the South.”
—The Island Packet
“As he does so well, Jakes creates a set of charming, diabolical, and memorable characters and weaves their story into the tapestry of American history…. Charleston paints a fascinating picture of one of the country’s most historically significant cities and engrosses the reader with the bittersweet saga of the Bell family. Meticulous research, a Jakes hallmark, is evident throughout…. Jakes does not disappoint with this latest endeavor. Longtime fans and newly appointed readers alike will be held spellbound by his attention to historical detail and his undisputed talent for storytelling.”
—Hilton Head Monthly
“The story is reminiscent of the author’s previous Civil War saga, North and South, which is to say it’s an excellent, enthralling story…. Charleston is the Civil War in the South in microcosm. As such, it explores many of the issues that led the country to war and also shines a harsh light on those who profited from the hardships and deprivations suffered by the residents of Charleston.”
—The Historical Novels Review
“John Jakes…has produced another wonderful volume…. Very fast-paced…. Jakes has written another winner and this reviewer recommends his work.”
—The Civil War News
Praise for John Jakes
“John Jakes is the best historical novelist of our time.”
—Patricia Cornwell
“John Jakes is the godfather of historical novelists.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Jakes’s bent for historical accuracy is unmatched in commercial fiction.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“He is, quite simply, a master of the ancient art of storytelling.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Jakes shows you what people wore, what they read, and what they drank and ate…. What you get is the feeling that this is life. That’s art.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Jakes has few peers.”
—Detroit Free Press
“It’s been said before, but it can’t be said enough—John Jakes makes history come alive, makes it stir your blood and excite your senses.”
—Nelson DeMille
Also by John Jakes
ON SECRET SERVICE*
CALIFORNIA GOLD*
THE BOLD FRONTIER*
The Crown Family Saga
AMERICAN DREAMS*
HOMELAND*
The North and South Trilogy
NORTH AND SOUTH*
LOVE AND WAR*
HEAVEN AND HELL*
The Kent Family Chronicles
THE BASTARD
THE REBELS
THE SEEKERS
THE FURIES
THE TITANS
THE WARRIORS
THE LAWLESS
THE AMERICANS
*Published by Signet
CHARLESTON
JOHN JAKES
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,
London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road,
Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads,
Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition.
ISBN: 978-1-1012-0964-6
Copyright © John Jakes, 2002
Maps by Jeffrey L. Ward
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is il
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In memory of two good friends at
The University of South Carolina
DR. GEORGE C. ROGERS, JR.
Department of History
DR. GEORGE TERRY
Thomas Cooper Library
The scholarship of George Rogers
drew me to South Carolina’s dramatic past.
The library directed by George Terry
helped me study it.
I hope both of them might have liked
this retelling of some of that history.
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Family Trees
Maps
PROLOGUE 1720
BOOK ONE: CITY AT WAR 1779–1793
1. The Summons
2. Bell’s Bridge
3. Adrian’s Thunderbolt
4. Lydia’s Proposal
5. To Malvern
6. The Partisans
7. “Long Live the Congress”
8. Joanna and the Colonel
9. The Last Days
10. At the Powder Magazine
11. Aftermath
12. The Red Monkey
13. Arrested
14. Joanna’s Vow
15. Marion
16. Blooded
17. Poorly’s Name
18. The Year of the Damned Old Fox
19. The List
20. War’s End
21. 1791
22. Tales of Terror
23. Chameleon
24. At Prosperity Hall
25. Omens
The Years Between 1793–1822
BOOK TWO: CITY ON FIRE 1822–1842
26. Rebellion
27. …. And After
28. Cousin Ouida
29. Bloody Friday
30. A Warning
31. Visitor from the Midlands
32. Lark and Angelina
33. The Larks Entertain
34. The Day of the “Best Friend”
35. Temptation
36. Dangerous Times
37. Dangerous Streets
38. Consequences
39. Winter of Misfortune
40. Anger
41. What Ouida Saw
42. Henry and Alex
43. Adrift
44. Fanning the Flames
45. Decision
46. Leave-Taking
47. 1840
48. Freedom Song
49. The Come-Outer
50. Lark’s Fate
51. Reunion
The Years Between 1842–1863
BOOK THREE: CITY OF ASHES 1863–1866
52. The Blockade Runner
53. Ravaged City
54. Ham
55. Under Fire
56. Alex and the Hero
57. Unseen Enemies
58. The Good Seed
59. Conversations at a Grave
60. Prisoners
61. Dark December
62. 1864
63. Freedom of the City
64. Celebration and Reunion
65. Ruins
66. Alex and the Stranger
67. Ouida’s Tea
68. Riot
69. Unexpected Encounters
70. Secret War
71. Confessions
72. A Blackmailer Intrudes
73. Ouida’s Fall
74. The Letter
75. Seven Pines
76. Storm Rising
77. Storm Breaking
78. In the Storm
79. Tom Bell’s Secret
80. Settling Accounts
81. A Better, Brighter Morning
Afterword
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Charleston, its residents like to say, stands where the Ashley and Cooper rivers form the Atlantic Ocean. At the time of the American Revolution, Charleston was the fourth largest city in the colonies, and the most elegant. She was loved and admired by Americans and Europeans for her ambience and charm, her culture and gentility.
The foundation of Charleston’s wealth was a series of dominant cash crops: indigo, then rice, then cotton, each dependent on slave labor. Charleston’s white elite lived in constant fear of those it kept in servitude to insure its prosperity.
Ultimately the city, the state, and political thought became slaves of the economic system. In the struggle to preserve it Charleston moved from an open society founded on religious tolerance and the free flow of ideas to a closed society threatened by, and hostile to, the outside world. At the end of this road lay secession and bloody civil war.
This is a tale of three eras, three Charlestons, and one family that endured fires and epidemics, hurricanes and earthquakes, bombardments and military occupations—nearly a century of history that was by turns courageous, turbulent, and tragic.
Through it all, and much more that followed in the next one hundred years, Charlestonians white and black remained proud survivors, and went on to create the beautiful cosmopolitan city that greets the visitor today.
The people of Charleston live rapidly, not willingly letting go untasted any of the pleasures of life…. Their manner of life, dress, equipages, furniture, everything, denotes a higher degree of taste and love of show, and less frugality than in the northern provinces.
Johann Schoepf, an eighteenth-century visitor
The institution of slavery shaped and defined Charleston as much as, if not more than, any other force in its history.
Robert N. Rosen, A Short History of Charleston
The waters run out of the harbor twice a day, leaving the mudflats uncovered, and with a hot sun baking down upon decaying matter, there is an odor—not unlike that of Venice—to let one know that all the beauty is built upon unsure foundations.
George C. Rogers, Jr., Charleston in the Age of the Pinckneys
South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.
Charleston Unionist James L. Petigru, on the eve of the Civil War
PROLOGUE
1720
Families are sometimes the children of chance. The family of this story had its beginning at the intersection of Broad and Meeting streets, in Charles Town, on the coast of Carolina, one rainy autumn afternoon in 1720.
Charles Town was by then fifty years old. It had been established as the center of a proprietary colony organized and financed, with the king’s permission, by eight wealthy Englishmen known as the Lords Proprietors. The chief organizer, Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, chose the name Carolina—Carolus, Latin for Charles—to honor his sovereign, Charles II.
That rainy day—no more than a steamy drizzle, really—a man and a woman hurried east on a footpath on the north side of a rutted mixture of sand and crushed oyster shells masquerading as a civilized street. Their destination was the Cooper River piers, where the man hoped to find menial work and cheap lodging. He was already discouraged by the sight of so many slaves, blue-black Africans, with whom he would have to compete.
He and the woman had journeyed in from a little trading station on a tributary of the Santee River. The store and stock pen of the station had long served one of the busy trails leading northwest to the Cherokee towns, but the Cherokee slave trade was dying as more ships sailed in from West Africa. The man and woman had abandoned the place because of poverty, loneliness, and the woman’s delicate condition.
On the southeast corner of Broad and Meeting stood a small Anglican church built of cypress. From somewhere within the palisade surrounding the church a bell rang the hour. The man stopped to listen. He’d always loved the sound of bells—ship’s bells, handbells of street criers, and especially the mighty cathedral bells of his native England, which he’d left as a boy. This bell was thin by comparison but sweet all the same.
Sydney Greech, late of Bristol, Barbados, and the sloop Ro
yal James, was now twenty. He had a certain lean good looks, though his eyes possessed a hardness born of his recent career at sea. The best that could be said about the young woman was that she still had a prettiness not yet ruined by harsh living conditions or the kind of debauchery in which she and Sydney liked to indulge. She called herself Bess; no last name ever came down to later generations.
A widow at seventeen, Bess had met Sydney in 1718, when he stumbled into her late husband’s trading station, lost and starving. Finding each other by accident, they lived together and took care of the business until deciding to leave it for the bustling town.
The sonorous peal of the church bells moved Sydney to say, “’Spose we should be officially married someday.”
“’Spose we should, since I’m carrying your babe.”
“Not very familiar wi’ churches. Truth is, never stepped inside one.”