Confederate Money. Paul Varnes
To all those who suffered or died during the Civil War, especially to my grandfathers and grandmothers and their dozens of brothers and sisters
Confederate Money
Paul Varnes
Copyright © 2003 by Paul Varnes
First paperback edition 2013
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ISBN (pbk): 978-1-56164-624-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Varnes, Paul.
Confederate money / by Paul Varnes.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-56164-271-1 (alk. paper)
1.United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Fiction. 2. Southern States--Fiction. 3. Young Men--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3622.A75 C66 2003
813’.6--dc21
2002014659
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Design by Shé Hicks
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Author’s Note
Many of the episodes in this novel of the Civil War are based on stories passed along in my family. Great-great-great-grandfather Isaac Varnes Sr. moved his family to Florida in 1823, twenty-two years before Florida became a state. (A military census estimated that less than 14,000 people lived in Florida in 1835.) Isaac Jr. married Louisa Ann Mettair, a Florida native of French descent whose parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents date back to early-eighteenth-century Saint Augustine.
Isaac Sr., his son Isaac Jr., and his grandson Henry are designated Florida Pioneers. Isaac Jr. named his first son after Andrew Jackson, with whom his father had served in the First Seminole Indian War. Isaac Sr., at age fifty-five, fought also in the Second Seminole War, alongside all his sons and all of Louisa’s brothers.
Of the three sons of Isaac Jr. and Louisa’s who fought in the Civil War, two died in service to their country. Andrew Lewis Varnes died November 30, 1862, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, while he was a prisoner en route to a prisoner exchange. Isaac Varnes III died September 3, 1864, near Atlanta. Though seriously ill at the time, Isaac III was in the first wave of the Confederate charge at Jonesboro when he was killed. Isaac Jr. died in 1864 near Olustee, Florida. Louisa died in Lulu, Florida, in 1878.
Isaac Sr.’s fifth child, Henry, was born in Florida. The Florida Ninth Infantry Regiment, with which he served during the Civil War, was assigned to General Lee’s army. Henry served with Lee at Petersburg, Virginia, until August of 1864, when he was sent home due to chronic diarrhea with chronic dyspepsia and a degeneration of his arteries. He married Susanna Melissa Hunter in 1867. Isaac Jr.’s brother, George, also had two sons