CARLISLE

Carlisle Cullen, born in the 1600s, was the bastard child of an English Anglican Pastor, doing mission work in Africa. Having lost both his wife and child during childbirth; Carlisle's father had taken an African woman as his lover. When the woman died giving birth to his son, Carlisle's father thought him to be a gift from God and took him back to England with him, against the wishes of both his lover's tribe and the English Church.

Carlisle's father brought him up in the ways of the church, to be a God-fearing man. However, as his father's health began to fade, Carlisle was expected to take up his father's reins of the Church; fighting the evils of this world.

Carlisle had watched his father's work and reluctantly went on raids, killing innocent people his father and other parishioners thought to be witches, vampires, werewolves and other evils of this world.

It was one night, his father lay bedridden; Carlisle was asked by his father to lead the raid. Having done some investigation of his own, Carlisle knew where a real coven of vampires hid in the sewers of London.

It was there, Carlisle lead the raiding party to their ultimate demise at the hands of real vampires. Carlisle himself had been bitten, able to surprise the vampire who bit him, when he stuck the torch he had been holding, into the vampire's hair, setting him alight. The vampire dropped Carlisle immediately running with his head a flamed. However, it was too late. Carlisle had already been bitten.

Carlisle didn't know how long he burned. He thought he had descended into the bowels of hell for all the lives lost due to the accusation and raids of innocent people.

When the burning finally rescinded, he awoke knowing exactly what he had become. Knowing he was unable to go back to his home, as he would surely be killed by his father or he would kill more innocent people, Carlisle tried desperately to kill himself. He tried drowning and hanging himself to no avail. He remembered how he had fought off the vampire who bit him but could not bring himself to walk into the fire, and the days of hellish burning he had already endured. What if it didn't kill him, only having to continue this existence constantly burning? No, Carlisle would not do that.

So, Carlisle decided he would starve himself. He hid for months in a cave. He found it quite easy to just lay, unmoving, not breathing and wait for death. He found the cold didn't bother him. So there he lay and waited for death to find him.

That is until the thudding in his ears and the aroma of blood overtook his senses. He could hear the heartbeats and the blood as it sloshed through the veins of a living creature.

Carlisle's eyes popped open and he sat up ramrod straight faster than the blink of an eye. He was so hungry and he had to have whatever that mouthwatering scent was.

Before he knew what was happening; Carlisle shot out of the cave-like a bat out of hell and was sinking his fangs into what he later discovered was a buck deer. Before he knew it, he had drained and killed an entire herd of deer. As the last of the warm blood flowed down his parched throat, and his strength and senses came back to him; Carlisle vowed he would never harm another human.

~~DUSK_TWILIGHT IN BLACK~~

JASPER

The lives of Southern black people changed immeasurably during the war years. Amid a see-saw struggle that promised freedom as well as desolation, these men, women, and children made difficult and highly personal decisions in extraordinary circumstances.

Many Southern slaves took advantage of the fog of war to escape towards freedom. Before the Emancipation Proclamation was officially adopted, these escapes usually meant congregating around the Union armies that were operating in Southern territory. Vast columns of escaped slaves followed almost every major Union army at one point or another. These people, sometimes called "contrabands," as in "confiscated enemy property," frequently served as scouts and spies for the Union soldiers.

When the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, Union forces had regained control of large swaths of the South. Although many now claim that the Proclamation was effectively useless because it established policy for a foreign nation, the practical reality is that the Union, by force of arms, had every necessary power to establish policy in its occupied territories, just as Confederate armies exercised their power to capture and enslave free black people during their brief occupations of Northern territories.

After the Proclamation, the refugees in the contraband camps, along with free black people throughout the North, began to enlist in the Union Army in an even greater proportion than Northern white men. After some time in legal limbo, many Southern black men took up arms against their former masters and distinguished themselves on the campaign and on the battlefield. By the time the war was over, black soldiers made up 10% of the Union Army and had suffered more than 10,000 combat casualties.

Some black Southerners aided the Confederacy. Most of these were forced to accompany their masters or were forced to toil behind the lines. Black men were not legally allowed to serve as combat soldiers in the Confederate Army-they were cooks, teamsters, and manual laborers. There were no black Confederate combat units in service during the war and no documentation whatsoever exists for any black man being paid or pensioned as a Confederate soldier, although some did receive pensions for their work as laborers. Nevertheless, the black servants and the Confederate soldiers formed bonds in the shared crucible of conflict, and many servants later attended regimental reunions with their wartime comrades.[1]

Major Jasper Whitlock served in both the Union and Confederate Armies simultaneously during the US Civil War. However he was not only the only black man to hold the rank of Major, but he was also the youngest Major in the Civil War.

He was forced to serve in the Confederate Army by his slave master at the age of 16 as a porter. However, Jasper was very charismatic and soon earned a greater role among the troops.

Unbeknownst to his Master, Jasper could read. When Jasper read that the Black men could enlist in the Union Army, Jasper planned his escape.

Leaving his home state of Texas, Jasper made his way east to Louisiana and was soon signed up with the 1st Native Guard of Louisiana, right under the nose of his Master.

Jasper's charismatic ways, allowed him to spy on the Confederate Army for the Union Army, earning him the rank of Major.

It was during one of his spy missions, that Jasper was thought to be captured, missing and presumed dead. However, history got it all wrong.

Jasper was seduced, on his way back to his unit from Galveston, TX, by three of the most beautiful women Jasper had ever laid eyes on.

Though they made the hackles stand up on the back of Jasper's head, he was always the ladies' man, and could not resist their feminine wilds. It wasn't until the leader of the three got close enough for Jasper to see her red-eyes that Jasper knew he was done for.

[1] learn/articles/black-confederates