The muscles in Jeremiah’s shoulders bunched beneath his cotton shirt as he steadied the blade to keep the furrow straight. His dark hair was damp beneath his felt hat, his beard scratchy against his skin. The sun was as yellow as freshly churned butter in a sky as blue as a robin’s egg. Squinting his brown eyes against the brightness, Jeremiah followed the sorrel haunches of the mule.

Suddenly a cry sounded behind him, and Jeremiah jerked his head to see his younger brother riding hell-bent up Turners Lane, flying at breakneck speed past the stately white edifice of Laurel Hill. Bringing the mule to an abrupt stop, Jeremiah watched Charlie gallop the buckskin gelding toward him, black mane waving like a banner in the wind.

Old Joe, at the other end of the field, followed Jeremiah’s lead and halted his mule-drawn plough. Eli, his eldest son, likewise stilled his work at planting. Behind him, driving a wagon loaded with a tub of water and a siphon to spray the freshly planted corn, the boy Silas also came to a stop.

In a smooth, athletic leap, Charlie vaulted to the ground, waving a newspaper wildly over his head. His hat fell to the ground, sandy brown hair tumbling into his blue eyes as he held tightly to Buck’s reins, snorting and prancing from the run.

“It’s happened!” Charlie cried. “The Rebels have taken Fort Sumter! The President’s calling for seventy-five thousand men to volunteer to stop them!” he gasped, breathless from the excitement as much as from the wild ride.

Their father, Francis Turner, supervised the planting from his perch atop the chestnut mare. A man as broad through the shoulders and thick through the chest as any man half his age, Francis studied his youngest son beneath thick white eyebrows which sprouted in as many directions as weeds in a fallow field. His blue eyes were solemn as he rubbed a weary hand over his face and lowered his head.

“I’d hoped this day would never come,” his voice was hoarse with regret as he spoke.

“What are we going to do?” Jeremiah queried, removing the reigns from his neck and stepping forward as he searched his father’s tired eyes.

Francis shook his head resolutely. “We will wait and hope Lincoln can crush this rebellion without help from my sons.”

“I hope he can’t,” Charlie retorted, the newspaper crinkling in his hand as he clenched his fist passionately. “We fought Britain to be a free country only to have Lincoln trample our Constitution. I say Godspeed the Rebels and may they make it a free country once again!”

“Stop such traitorous talk and help your brother with the planting,” Francis snapped. “I’ll take that,” he extended his right hand to accept the newspaper, waving his left hand at Jeremiah to resume his work.

Charlie handed over the Centreville Times obediently, but his blue eyes flashed as he declared, “I think you and Lincoln have both underestimated the Confederacy. This isn’t just a band of rebels causing trouble. They aren’t going to be easily defeated.”

“Time will tell,” Francis answered quietly.

Straightening, Jeremiah leveled his dark eyes on Charlie. “You want to join this rebellion? Do you really think it wise to sting a slumbering giant?” His eyebrows, black as a crow’s wing but just as unruly as his father’s, drew together in challenge.

“Better to sting the giant than to be trampled under its feet!” Charlie glowered at his older brother. “There’s always a price to freedom!”

Jeremiah draped the reins over the wooden handle and stomped angrily toward his brother. “You’re not seeing the whole picture, Charlie! If Maryland sets herself against the Federal Government, we’ll lose everything we have!”

“So you would just give in to the tyrant, instead of fighting for what’s right?”

“Peace!” Francis cried, placing himself between his two sons just as he had positioned himself between the two factions at town meetings many times before.

He clenched his fists and barked out the word once more: “Peace! How many times must we fight for it before it is finally ours to keep? Peace must not be lost at every disagreement, but carefully guarded as something fragile and prized. We must learn to compromise! The only thing standing in the way of peace is man’s pride and stubborn ego.”

Charlie side-stepped his father to glare at Jeremiah. “Well, if one man demands and the other complies, I don’t call that compromise. I call it tyranny.”

“Enough!” Francis nearly growled, his bushy white brows drawn together violently as he stared down first one son and then the other. “You, go take care of your horse,” he dismissed Charlie. To Jeremiah, he pointed to the plough. “Back to work.”

Jeremiah plodded through the thick black soil to take up his position behind the plough, snapping the leather reins on the mule’s rump and setting her into motion. He saw the belligerent glare his brother shot him from beneath the hat he shoved onto his head before swinging up onto Buck and riding toward the barn.

Behind him in the field, like shadows unnoticed by those whose eyes are not downcast to the ground, the slaves stood silently waiting for the signal to resume their labors.

(If you'd like to read more, ON GROUNDS OF HONOR is available in paperback at Amazon.com, on Nook and Kindle, and I'll be selling copies for Centreville Day at the Courthouse Green this Saturday, October 31st from 9:00 to 3:00.)

Growing up in Southern Maryland, I knew Point Lookout as a fishing pier. It wasn’t until I began to study the Civil War that I realized its dark history. After the battle of Gettysburg, Confederate prisoners were sent to Point Lookout Prison Camp to be held until they could be exchanged or paroled. The camp was originally designed to hold 10,000 prisoners, but during most of its existence it held 12,600 to 20,000 inmates.
The prisoners were crowded into tents within the “bull pen,” the stockade where they were confined on the Point. The walls of this pen were fourteen feet high, with a platform along its perimeter for the guards to keep watch. At the greatest point of overcrowding there were as many as three men sharing a single blanket throughout the bitter winter.
A peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River, Point Lookout was only five feet above sea level and prone to flooding. This location also helped to make it one of the most secure POW camps, with an estimated 50 successful escapes.

It has been estimated that over 14,000 prisoners died at Point Lookout, but at present only a near 3,384 are accounted for as buried in the Point Lookout cemetery. Their graves have been moved twice since the original burial. They now rest in a mass grave under a towering obelisk monument, 80 feet high, with bronze tablets listing the names of those so far recorded. This monument was placed there in 1910 when the federal government assumed care of the property. In 1876 a smaller 25 foot monument was erected by the state of Maryland to the memory of the Confederate prisoners who died there.
Point Lookout, during its time as a prison camp, consisted of the 1830 Lighthouse, Hammond Hospital, the Camp Hoffman Stockade for prisoners, Nuns housing, Fort Lincoln, guards’ quarters, officers' quarters, stables, contraband quarters, Union quarters and burying grounds.
If you visit Point Lookout today, the Lighthouse remains and is reputed to be haunted by the ghosts of Confederate soldiers. Most of the prison pen site is under the bay waters now, but a section of the wall has been recreated by the Friends of Point Lookout. The earth works of Fort Lincoln still exist on the river shore near Cornfield Harbor. The barracks, officer quarters and a portion of the prison pen have also been recreated and are the focus of Living History weekends each year.
My Historical Fiction Novel, FOR THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM, opens with Charlie Turner suffering with his fellow prisoners of war at Point Lookout. He will be one of the few who successfully escape.

Since we’ve settled (somewhat) into our new home, I’ve finally been able to dedicate some time to writing my latest novel, FOR THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM, the second book in the series, MY BROTHER’S FLAG. I’m happy to say that at least the first five chapters of the rough draft are completed, and those are always the most challenging for me. The rest of it should come more quickly.

To celebrate this accomplishment, I wanted to share with you a little about the setting of this novel. Of course, if you haven’t read ON GROUNDS OF HONOR, stop now and read it before you go any further. I don’t want to ruin the story for you.

Book 1 was written from the perspective of Jeremiah, the older of the two Turner brothers, who enlisted with the Union Army. At its close, his younger brother Charlie, the Rebel, had been taken prisoner at the Battle of Gettysburg and was being held at Point Lookout, in Southern Maryland. And this is where Book 2 opens.

Most of the story, however, takes place on the grounds of Bloomingdale. How Charlie gets from the Prison Camp on the Western Shore to the plantation on the Eastern Shore, you’ll have to wait to read the story to find out.