Angelina
Previous Journal | Next Journal
|
23 October 1862, 9:50 P.M Old Mill Crossing, Gettysburg
Summer has departed and a brilliant autumn has arrived. We have no word from my brother. It has been six weeks since his last letter. Elizabeth informs me that John had been writing two or three letters a week. We are all very concerned.
Angelina and I are becoming good friends. I finally learned the peculiar details behind her letter to me dated nearly a year and a half ago, though my chance to meet her mother, Violet, has come too late. Violet died two months before my arrival. Elizabeth, who knew firsthand of my pursuit to expose the Devil in history, helped Angelina tell her mother's story of their family and how they came to America. It is such an incredible story, both precluding and confirming all that Father Gibault spoke to me that cold December day in 1859 at John Brown's hanging. That I would be granted to learn of Violet's story is surely the work of an All-Knowing God. Angelina's grandmother, Marie Charbonneau, was born of wealthy French parents in 1785 and was among the thousands who witnessed King Louis XVI's beheading in 1793. To avoid the terror that followed, her family left France. Her father and his older brother crossed the Atlantic to Haiti and became plantation owners; her father's younger brother continued onto Charleston, South Carolina. In 1797, the terror found them again when a bloody slave revolt struck the tiny Caribbean island. Only twelve-year-old Marie and her older brother escaped, crossing the mountains to Hispaniola. Ten years later, the flames of revolt that swallowed their parent's plantation clawed their way over the mountains. Marie's brother was killed; she was beaten and raped in her own home. She would never forget that dark night, when her former slaves danced on the lawn chanting the name of Ogu Loa! Ogu Loa! A beak-faced old man in tattered clothing stood among the burning timbers without being consumed. At the age of twenty-two, Marie gave birth to a mulatto girl she named Catherine, after her mother. Fifteen years later in 1822, Marie and Catherine departed Hispaniola for her uncle's plantation in South Carolina. While aboard the ship, Marie contracted pneumonia and died three months later, in Charleston. The family confiscated Marie's assets and forced Catherine from the house because she was a mulatto. Without protection, she fell into the hands of a local banker who renamed her Violet and took her into his house. The banker was Angelina's natural father. In 1858, he died, and his son sold Violet and Angelina to a ship's captain from Alexandria, Virginia. In the summer of 1860, the captain went down at sea. Violet and Angelina returned to the auction block. A merchant from Gettysburg, representing several families, came to the estate auction that year and purchased them both for the purpose of granting them freedom. Upon reaching Gettysburg, Violet and Angelina were taken in by John Ezra and Elizabeth. Now I know why God sent Angelina to me. She is only twelve, yet she has insight into the spiritual beyond what I can anticipate. Not only that, but her brief family history has given me insight to understand how the Devil drew his bloody trail of oppression, rebellion, and violence from Europe across the Atlantic and through the Caribbean on to America. Earlier this evening we sat on the front porch and watched a crimson sunset behind Big Round Top. While I wrote notes on the Rebel Heart, Angelina sat on the top step, my family journal open across her lap. She looked up at me, her eyes brimming with tears. "Grandma Nikki died in your arms?" I closed my notebook. "Yes, she did." Angelina scrunched her dark eyebrows. "She was a woman of God, wasn't she?" I recalled Grandma's face, determined and purposeful, with sparkling eyes. "Yes, she was." Angelina drew her finger across the journal page. "`Out of your loins will come two men with strong medicine. With their lips they will drink from a bitter spring. With their ears they will hear the cry of the blood. With their eyes they will see the dark root of evil in men's souls.'" She turned around, her face bursting with awe. She climbed to her knees and edged close to my chair. How disarmed I was by this precious girl! And how unprepared for the revelation she would so casually offer! Truly, "Out of the mouths of babes and infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger." Angelina studied my face. I do not recall having ever seen such a sober visage in one her age. "Sam," she said, placing her hand over mine, "you're gonna be like my Grandma and my Mamma, aren't you? God gave you special eyes to see Ogu Loa, the Devil, too." My body tingled from head to toe, and the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end. Never once since Grandma Nikki spoke the prophecy to me in the barn had I considered interpreting her words in such a literal manner. Stunned, I squeezed her hand. To Angelina, the Devil was not a clever theological dissertation on moral corruption. To Angelina, Evil was not an intangible force, but a living, visible power. We sat quietly and watched the sun disappear behind the crest of Big Round Top.
|