And the War Came
Book 2 of A HOUSE UNITED series

By pulitzer2016

Ponderosa Ranch
Western Utah Territory
November 1859

Twenty-nine-year-old Adam Cartwright sat on his bed and studied the ferrotype of himself, Little Joe, and Josie. He'd never intended to let nine years pass before seeing Josie again, but he'd never been able to get away long enough to travel all the way to Washington. Pa had continued to expand the Ponderosa until it reached its current 600,000 acres, so there were always fences and line shacks to mend, cattle to round up, brand, and drive to market, timber contracts to negotiate, horses to break, and now mines to open and manage. Josie had spent the years assisting her father in his clinic, and shortly before her sixteenth birthday, she had matriculated to the Hartford Female Seminary for some higher education before applying to medical school. So she'd been busy with school and nursing, and Adam had been busy on the Ponderosa, but not a day went by that the cousins did not sense each other's absence.

"Hey, Older Brother!" Hoss's voice thundered up the stairs, snapping Adam back to the present. "You comin' down to supper, or are me and Little Joe gonna have to eat your share?"

Adam smiled and set the ferrotype back on his bureau. Hoss had a knack for unintentionally cheering people up, and he kept smiling as he made his way down the stairs to defend his supper from his brothers.

Adam sat at the foot of the supper table opposite Ben and surveyed the spread. As usual, Hop Sing had laid out a feast: roast beef, baked potatoes, carrots, beans, and biscuits. He suddenly felt ravenous. Ben blessed the food, and the four men dug in.

While they ate, Hoss mentioned he was going into Virginia City tomorrow. It was a grubby little town that had recently sprung up because of the huge Comstock Lode silver strike made earlier that year. Men had been gold mining the region for nearly a decade, but it was now clear the region's wealth would come from silver. Miners had flocked into eastern California and the western Utah Territory by the thousands.

"Hop Sing asked me to pick up some groceries," Hoss remarked. "Told me if I could find a pumpkin while I was there, he'd bake a pie."

Adam said he'd ride along. "I really need a haircut," he grumbled, brushing that damn lock of hair out of his eyes. "And I should post a letter to Josie. If I don't answer her soon, she's going to think we've all been scalped."

Ben smiled. "I was in town today myself and heard some interesting news about your cousin's part of the country."

The three sons snapped to attention, waiting for their father to continue. Pa had tried to sound casual, but Adam's stomach dropped, and he lost his appetite. The political situation between the northern and southern states had been strained for most of his life, but tensions had risen so high in the past decade that Adam—along with thousands of other Americans—feared a war. And when war broke out, he knew, Washington, DC, would be right in the thick of it. Reminding himself that Josie was now 150 miles farther north at medical school in Philadelphia cheered him only slightly.

"Do you remember the abolitionist John Brown?" Ben asked.

Adam nodded.

"Maybe," Hoss said, furrowing his brow. "Sounds kinda familiar."

"No," Little Joe sounded like he thought Pa were crazy for asking such a ridiculous question.

Ben shot his youngest a stern look while Hoss kicked him swiftly under the table. Little Joe inhaled sharply at the stabbing pain in his shin and apologized.

"Didn't Brown disappear after those murders in the Kansas Territory a few years ago?" Adam said.

Ben nodded. John Brown, an abolitionist originally from Ohio, and a few of his sons had moved to the Kansas Territory in 1855 hoping to turn the territory into a free state. His tactics were not peaceful. In May 1856, Brown, four of his sons, and two other men dragged five pro-slavery supporters out of their homes in the middle of the night and hacked them to death with broadswords in what became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre. One of Brown's sons had been captured, but Brown himself had disappeared.

"He's back," Ben said. "He turned up in Virginia just a few weeks ago."

He told the boys about John Brown's raid on the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. An overzealous abolitionist, Brown had planned an elaborate scheme to take over the arsenal, where he expected the slaves in the area to rise up against their masters and join him. They would seize the weapons from the arsenal and travel south, freeing slaves and terrorizing slaveholders as they went along. If all went as planned, John Brown would start the war that would end slavery in America forever.

Things did not go as planned.

On the night of October 16, Brown and his men, including three of his sons, successfully cut the telegraph wires and secured the bridges into Harpers Ferry. But they foolishly let an express train continue from the Ferry to Washington, DC, and its passengers alerted every town along the nearly seventy-mile route of the trouble in Virginia. Meanwhile, angry townsmen had cornered Brown and his men in the nearby engine house and cut off Brown's only avenue of escape. By the morning of the 18th, ninety Marines, dispatched by President Buchanan and led by one Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee, arrived, rushed the engine house, and took a wounded Brown captive. John Brown's "war" on slavery had lasted less than thirty-six hours and had cost seventeen lives, including two of his sons, six townspeople, and one Marine. He hadn't freed a single slave. Instead, his men had killed a free Black man at the train station, and Brown had incurred the wrath of both North and South—the South because he had tried to wage war on them, and the North because they didn't want to be associated with Brown's brand of militant zealotry.

When Ben finished his tale, all three young men sat silently for some time.

"Is there gonna be a war, Pa?" Little Joe said at last.

"I don't know. I certainly hope not. War—any war, for any cause—is a tragic waste of lives. But if it does come to war, at least we're all safe, way out here on the Ponderosa."

"We're not all safely here," Adam said. No longer hungry, he pushed away his plate.

Hoss intuited what was bothering his older brother.

"Josie ain't in the thick of it anymore, though, Adam. She's all the way up in Philadelphia."

"It's not that far," Adam said. "Philadelphia is only 150 miles north of Washington, and there's a railroad connecting them."

"We don't even know for sure there is going to be a war," Ben reassured him. "And if there is, my brother will ensure his family's safety, the same as I would."

Adam murmured his agreement, and the conversation shifted to the work they needed to do around the ranch over the next few days. They were expecting snow soon, and Ben wanted their winter stock moved to more sheltered pastureland and the line shacks checked one last time for weather-proofing.

The rest of the family ate heartily, but Adam could force down only a few bites of roast and potatoes. When he caught Hoss eyeing his still nearly full plate, he pushed it toward him and excused himself from the table. Ben watched with concern as his eldest mounted the steps toward his bedroom, but after nearly thirty years, Ben knew better than to press him, especially when he was upset. Adam would speak up in his own time.

Once Adam was out of earshot, Little Joe turned to his father. "Pa?" he asked as he unconsciously rubbed the old scar on his right forearm. "Josie will be all right, won't she?"

"Of course she will," Ben confirmed, though he thought it might be time to write a letter to his brother.

In his bedroom, Adam sat at his writing desk next to the window and composed his reply to Josie.

Ponderosa Ranch
Utah Territory
November 7, 1859

Dear Josie,

Please forgive the tardiness of my reply to your letter of September 11. Hoss and Little Joe accidentally set an angry bull loose in the middle of Virginia City two weeks ago, and we have all been busy helping the businessmen repair the damage to their storefronts.

Virginia City is growing rapidly. I have never seen a town go up so quickly! It is nice to have a town closer than Carson City. It takes only two hours to ride into Virginia City as opposed to the four to reach Carson City, so we can go into town much more frequently. Little Joe and Hoss have been enjoying the saloon—when the barkeeper is not throwing Little Joe out for being too young, anyway. We are hoping to have a telegraph office in town by the end of next year. I will enjoy getting news much faster than we do now.

I am glad to hear you are settling in well at medical school. I am extraordinarily proud of you, and I am certain you will make a fine doctor. The world needs more good doctors, especially here in the West. One of Carson City's doctors, our old friend Dr. Paul Martin, has moved into Virginia City and set up a practice. It is good to have a doctor closer, though he has quite a large territory to cover—pretty much everything between Virginia City and Placerville, California.

Your roommate sounds lovely, too. However, if she returns to Boston for any length of time, you might warn her about Aunt Rachel.

Life here on the Ponderosa goes on pretty much the same as it always has. We will move our winter stock to safer pasture tomorrow, patch up a few holes in the line shacks, and then enjoy a few months with a lighter workload.

Pa told us tonight at supper about John Brown's attack on the arsenal in Virginia. I am sure you have heard of it, but, Josephine, please be cautious. It gives me great comfort to know that you are not currently in Washington, but I fear this tension between North and South will boil over into war, and when it does, it most certainly will be near Washington. I implore you to stay out of the city when that happens. I know Aunt Rachel can be difficult, but the Stoddard home would be your safest refuge. In the meantime, monitor the situation closely and enjoy your studies. I hope to attend your graduation when you finish.

I miss you, too.

Love,

Adam