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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/item_id/1960760-Emmas-Rifles-Books-one-to-five
by opus
Rated: 13+ · Book · Action/Adventure · #1960760
1850 -Watershed year . the Fugitive Slave Act tears a country Temp. free read SmaShwords
                                    Authors Note: This novel contains a few historical figures, and many fictional. The events are fictional and are not intended to represent current or historical events. Any resemblance is accidental.

The story interweaves. As with any historical period novel, background determines motives, and I have attempted to create the historical setting without being too complex or ‘wordy’-

The novel’s central premise is ‘slightly steam punky.” From 1830 to 1870, British Canadians and the US “squared off’ over the border. By 1875, the complete high powered rifle had been devised- in France.

My premise was “what would have happened if Great Britain had had the equivalent of the Lebel rifle in 1850- at the height of tension- and no one else had it?”

By 1850, Britain has a working high powered rifle- This is fiction, grounded in science. In the novel, this gives them an enormous military advantage, as long as it lasts. The ‘British rifle’ is a compilation of inventions in place by 1850 in different areas of the world, which I consolidated into 1850 as a prototype. The 'closest equivalent' was the French Gras  rifle of 1870, in a cruder form, but with the physics of nitrocellulose, known before 1850, but made practical after 1870, replacing gunpowder.

(Note: The United States clung to black powder until the Spanish American war, when they were surprised by Spanish forces, carrying the new Mauser rifles- the “Cuban Hornets.”                    

         America -1850

•          The United States of America was in danger of’ “coming apart at the seams’,

•          The Missouri Compromise.

•          •          America was leaving the frontier Transition era to become an industrial nation. Power, was shifting from the agrarian South to the rapidly expanding Mid- West and the financial centre of the Northern States, the Boston to Philadelphia corridor.

•          The railroad age was consolidating; Short lines from ports were being replaced with rail networks. Rail connection was available from the Atlantic to the Great lakes, to the Ohio, to the Mississippi. The era of steam power and the expansion of the telegraphs was in ‘full flood’. A society that had moved at the speed of horseback now moved at the speed of steam: messaging at the speed of light.

.•          . The economy had recessed, but was resolving its issues and expanding with the inflow of California gold.

British Empire - 1850:

•          A plot is launched divide and separate America into Free states and Slave states, then to exhaust both sides in civil war, with the South winning a peace of exhaustion. The plot will establish client states at the peripherals- of the American republic.

•          The British Islands are losing fertile soil.  : Guano, for soil renewal is becoming expensive and rare. (Note: in 1850 there were no artificial fertilizers.)

      The age of steel had established Britain as (the temporary) pre – eminent world steel producer, but their supply of iron ore was unsecured.



Potpourri:

The novel is a lament for paths that ' lost, wild, beautiful America’ never took, the price that was paid for speedy industrialization. The novel is warning against following the 'Great Men on Horseback' when their schemes become too ambitious, based on the grasp of a momentary advantage. Readers in a hurry can skim chapters eight through eleven and still follow the gist of the story. These chapters outline how Grant Parker will lay out his future nation, and how he progressed from a frontier rough man, to a statesman.

The three chapters also describe a balanced ecological approach to developing America, which you may find interesting, or may want to gloss over. Much was lost in the headlong rush for the frontier. Unfortunately, when the high power rifles finally appeared, they tended to ‘cap the process.’

But, that is for the next novel. …

Geography:

The novel begins, briefly, in Manitoba, then shifts to the Blood County wars of 1838, in Missouri Then it moves to the river towns of Ste Genevieve and St Louis, Missouri The novel moves up the Ohio River, and finishes on the Great Lakes (literally).

    Good Guys and Bad Guys:

1.          Captain Bruce Nellis. Fictional. Moderate importance. Nellis is a soldier of honor sent on a dubious mission.  He falls into Lord Welles plotting, but in the end- becomes a Good Guy.

2.          Governor William Caldwell. Historical, but his thoughts are my invention. Caldwell is trapped- if war breaks out, he is a ‘sacrificed lamb,’- along with Western Canada. Minor  Good Guy

3.          Emma Reynolds-Fictional. The Main Character. Pivotal. Excellent Person.

4.          Grant Parker- Fictional. The Alternate Main character. Major and pivotal. Grant progresses from an alienated, capable but violent, and ‘defensively racist’ man to someone who realises that if there is a successful Aboriginal Republic, he has to meld it in between two hostile states. Good Guy.

5.          Lord Welles-Fictional.  Insane Bad Guy.

6.          Baldwin and Lafontaine -. Historical.  Minor Good Guys. In real life, mostly forgotten, great Canadians.

7.          Governor George Simpson - Historical. Worth a dozen novels. Becomes a Good Guy.

8.          Pierre Chounard-Fictional.  Major Character. A tormented veteran of Napoleon’s army. He starts out as a slave hunter, becomes a Very Good Guy

9.          Henry Blake-Fictional. Major Character. Henry will say he is the ‘Ultimate Good Guy.’ He leaves the slave trade, (when it becomes dangerous and unprofitable.) He breaks the slave hunting firms (by stealing their funds); bankrupts an evil planter; frees the most beautiful slave in America (although he planned to sell her to a California bordello), and bolts back to England with a fortune.  Completely amoral-you choose…

10.          Matt Hunter-Fictional. Slave hunter, becomes a Good Guy, frees and marries Paula.

11.          Paula Hamilton- Fictional .Very Good Person

12.           Prince Kinta. –Fictional. Escaped slave: Very Good Guy, when he isn’t killing slave trackers.

13.          Captain Robert Johnston-Fictional. British agent; American double agent. Tormented smart veteran dragoon. Very Good Guy.

14.          The Franklins, Calvin and father-Fictional. Abolitionists; Very Good Guys.

15.          Robert Hamilton-Fictional. Wealthy, barbaric cotton planter. Very Bad Guy.

16.          Stuart Chase-Fictional. Stuart kills Emma’s uncle and three cousins. He then marries Emma and becomes a Good Guy



Overture: 1838  Caldwell County: The Shattering

Professor James Smith the Second, University of Bristol, qualified his analysis of America’s year of turmoil; Eighteen hundred and fifty.

“Since my father's time, documentation has come to light that both British and French plans existed to incite the American Civil War in the eighteen fifties. An attempt to create the division of the North American continent into managed sections, proposed by the Imperial War Office. Fans of the ‘Nefarious British’ theories should keep in mind that our fears were well founded. Canada had a tenuous hold on the continent north of the fourty ninth parallel; the Rupertsland sovereignty grant had no military, and little political power. Rupertsland was strictly a commercial empire, a trade network. The vast gold reserves of the Northern Pacific coast were unknown, but believed extensive, based on the California gold rush.”

Professor Smith paused. “The British Empire was facing a resurgent Prussia, an expanding Russia; and an active, expanding French empire. Wise thought foresaw the establishment of separate Dominions, or independent client republics, as justified Britain feared what America would become, America feared what Britain could do. Both nations, during the year of eighteen hundred and fifty saw each other, through the glass, darkly.”

The Missouri Civil War: Eighteen Hundred and Thirty Seven

“Wake up, Emma, wake your sisters. There is trouble, and we must flee,” Julie Reynolds gathered her young children in her arms. While Emma dressed her sisters, her mother packed, hurried and frantic. The Reynolds’ homestead farm along Crooked River held few possessions, and only one wagon. The cold October winds carried the muffled boom of light cannon, the sharp reports of muskets, the shouts of anger. Daniel Reynolds harnessed his draft horse team to the family wagon. Chest, bedding, and utensils are piled into the wagon bed. He placed their three young daughters on top of the possessions.

“Daniel, come with us, please. This isn’t your battle.”

“Bill’s my brother, hot head and all. He’s calling out the county militia.”

“Don’t ride to Hauns Mill. You can’t stop this war. Emma and I cannot run this farm if I am widowed; or if you are crippled.”

“I’ll be careful. Someone has to talk sense in Missouri.” He swung lightly into the saddle and rode northwest on the high trail to Far West Colony.  Reynolds’s wife and daughter cautiously drove east to the hoped for safety of Carrolton and Carroll County.

Flames lit the Missouri night. Emma spotted the boy’s body by Shoal Creek.  “Momma,  it’s a boy, and he is moving. He’s alive, Momma.” The injured child was young and not conscious. His scalp, slashed by a sword cut, bled profusely. The woman and her girls bandaged his wound, stretching the young man out in their wagon bed.

“Hide him under the blanketing. Tell no one.”

“I was eight years old, Philippe. The last that I saw of him. He said his name was Stuart.  Momma left him in good care until his people could claim him back.  Then his people, they all left Missouri- Governor Boggs’s infamous death or eviction order.

“That was the last that I remember of my father, too. He stepped between the Militia and the Hauns’ mill defenders, tried to reason out a truce. Father took a stray bullet. My uncle, Bill, he boiled into rage, massacred the mill people, the families. Momma sold Bill the land, but the joy went out of her life that fall, and when she took the cholera, she didn’t even try to fight it off.

“Madness- the news reached Ste. Genevieve. We raised a relief fund; no one knew what to say or what to do. Mon Dieu. Our own state. You have a place here, now Emma. That was eleven years ago. You must try to forget.”

“I wake up at nights, yet. It’s better if I lodge away from the hotel; perhaps with a deaf landlady. Until I can afford my own home.”

She encountered her anti-slavery cell leader in the afternoon, screened by the flowering Kentucky trees, where the lush growth crowned the river levee. “It’s set, Grant. I work until midnight, Monday through Saturday. He sleeps at the hotel every second week, on the veranda with the other young drinkers. Do you have his picture?”

“It’s a good lithograph. Don’t show it to anyone, Emma. Destroy it after the first night. You are sure that you want to go ahead? You can back out, now.”

“I’ll do anything for you, Grant.  For both you and the cause. And I miss you, dearly. When do we move in together?  Grant, I really want to marry you.”

“Emma, after the abduction, I may have to vanish for a time. You know that we are asking for the release of many of the abolitionist leaders, held on charges in the South. The plantation holders can put up big money, release innocent people for his safe return.  Or, they may sweep this area of Missouri with a fine-tooth comb. I can’t risk your safety by staying around. Right now, I’m just a riverfront Mustee, a humble fisherman, taking advantage of the boom of 1849. The cover story, if I need one, is that I skipped to the Indian Territory along the Red River.”

“I know that, silly man. Right now, I’m just in love. Deeply in love. And it feels glorious.”





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#1. The Hunter of the Negroes Book three
ID #796299 entered on October 31, 2013 at 10:31am


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