Bullwhip Effect

A Love Story   

Mount Airy plantation  

Richmond, Virginia, April 1863  

Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain
While we were marching through Georgia

It’s hard to say when Henry fell in love.  The Hessian gamekeeper’s son was raised to be a hunter and had seen wild animals mate all his life.  Likewise the peasants and pikers who lived in the Baron’s forest won by Landsknecht mercenaries long ago.  Daisy was a Georgia peach, mistress by absence of her brothers of what was probably the largest sugar beet plantation in the world.  The Baron expected Henry to notice what Daisy called “quality folk,” which means “nobility” in English.  It was probably the way she used supply and command.   

 It was in April… the dritte springtime of the war.  Henry had come south by boat, she came north by four-horse phaeton to discuss horses and slaves… and of course… the war.  They were riding together over Mount Airy, when they encountered a gaggle of darkies laughing, Daisy’s whip cracked over their heads like a pistol shot and they scattered.  Up rode the overseer who dismounted and produced a shotgun to shoot the slaves with sand, and Daisy’s whip snaked about his ankles and jerked him clean off his feet.  Henry was in love. 

Our country – when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.

Mr. Heinrich Von Hess (if that is his real name) comes from Germany.  He has no loyalties whatsoever to either side of our conflict and pays handsome prices in gold for the finest of our horses and slaves.  He is slight of frame with a face like a girl, but he may profit our independence if treated well.  That was what Daisy wrote in her report to General Hampton, sealed it, and giggled when she thought of the pretty Dutch boy and his jokes.  Even the overseer was laughing at the end of that day.  Henry put her in charge of this theatre in Harrisburg. 

Daisy was an abolitionist, which was not popular in Georgia… so Daisy kept that opinion to herself.  Unnecessary in Harrisburg watching Hooker’s army and growing her career as an actress… acting like a loyal Union girl.  He wrote letters she never could answer.  But the war had its own purposes and was moving them toward Chancellorsville.  There death had taken so many loved ones… even suffering of enemies became hard.  They loved each other so much all of their lives, if only in letters on a page.  The sight of each other breaking with age became more terrible. 

Gettysburg would teach them to bear the unbearable.