Jubilee

One morning, Grimes appears on the doorstep of the Big House wearing a gray and gold Confederate uniform. He announces that he has enlisted and is heading to Macon to defend the city from Union forces. Missy Salina asks about his wife, Jane, and their children. Grimes says that they are heading into the hills to stay with Jane’s family. Salina offers that they could have stayed on the plantation, but Grimes insists that Jane wanted to return home. Salina says that, after the war, the Duttons will be looking for Grimes to return, and that he will always have a job “as long as the place stands” (295).

Though it’s summer, the Shady Oaks plantation is inactive. Lillian wishes for the war to end, while her mother insists that it must continue “until [they] have justice” (297). In mid-July, Missy Salina takes the entire household to Andersonville to find black people to work her fields and “hoe the weeds around her door” (297). She takes her house slaves to avoid their being tempted to run off.

Andersonville is 35 miles away, which means that it takes three-and-a-half days to travel in a wagon. When they enter the city, however, they notice a repulsive stench. The smell comes from the bodies of Yankees rotting in the prison. Salina also finds out that there are no black people at the prison. The group returns to Shady Oaks. Salina becomes more anxious, particularly after hearing about a naval battle near Mobile. Around dawn on August 6, “a booming noise that [is] louder than a clap of thunder” (299) awakens the Dutton household. The explosions resound every 15 minutes. They are “the big Yankee guns [shooting] at a rebel gunboat on the Chattahoochee not more than twenty-five miles away” (299).

Suddenly, Salina begins to feel unwell and complains about headaches. Lillian sends for Old Doc. The explosions are so powerful that the china quakes and the fine crystal breaks. Salina begins to lose control over her bowels. By the time Old Doc arrives, he finds her on her chamber pot, having just had “a massive stroke” (301). The stroke renders her unable to speak. Lillian asks Vyry if she thinks that her mother’s condition will improve. Vyry says that Missy Salina will likely not recover. Salina Dutton dies on August 7.

The naval battle at Mobile ends on August 7, 1864. Sherman enters Atlanta on September 1. Georgia governor Joseph Brown blames President Jefferson Davis for the collapse of the Confederacy. Davis arrives in Georgia to give a speech that he hopes will boost the state’s morale. In Macon, people arrive in droves to hear him and praise his words with applause. Miss Lillian reads his speech from the newspapers but can’t understand why Vyry, Caline, and May Liza express no interest in what Davis said. In the speech, Davis compared the Georgians’ fight to that of the Russians against Napoleon. He then praised Southern women for their sacrifices to the war effort. As laudatory as the speech was, it was also “an admission of defeat” (305). Sherman, after all, had “[destroyed] all the remaining resources of war remaining for the Confederates’ use in Georgia” (307), including railroads, livestock, factories, and crops. Sherman then went from Macon to Milledgeville, seizing the capital.

One late November morning, Fanny Crenshaw visits Shady Oaks. Lillian is confused to see her wearing black, in mourning for John Jr. She warns Lillian that Sherman is coming, meaning that Lillian should hide all valuables and “save whatever food and stock [she] can” (308). Lillian thanks Fanny but insists that they’ll be fine. After Fanny leaves, Lillian confides to Vyry that she’s worried about something happening to all her mother’s finery, knowing that Salina would never forgive her if her prized possessions were lost to Yankees.

Lillian directs Caline and May Liza to hide prized objects, such as “huge candelabra […] silver tea and coffee pots and water pitchers, dinnerware […] and all her precious stones” (308). Vyry comes up with the idea of hiding the chest “in a hollow tree trunk or log near the swamp” (309). At Christmas time, Vyry “[bakes] cakes and pies and [makes] molasses candy for the children” (309), insisting on giving them a nice holiday. Miss Lillian, meanwhile, is distracted and depressed. No one knows that President Lincoln has been re-elected and that General Sherman has sent his commander-in-chief “a telegram from Savannah […] offering him the city as a Christmas gift” (309). 

On January 1, 1865 federal authorities re-announced the Emancipation Proclamation in Georgia, but those in the backwoods, including Miss Lillian, Vyry, Caline, and May Liza, are unaware. Vyry focuses instead on convincing them that it’s time to plant crops so that they can feed themselves. By May, the first shoots spring up. Then, in the third week of May, a loud boom and a black cloud alarms the women. Union soldiers and their horses descend upon the property. One knocks on the door and asks May Liza, who answers, for her mistress. Lillian comes downstairs and greets him. He tells Lillian that all her slaves are to go into the yard and hear him read the Emancipation Proclamation. While he reads, tears stream down Vyry’s face. Ten-year-old Jim lifts his six-year-old sister, Minna, up and begins to dance and sing in praise of the day of Jubilee.

Vyry returns to the kitchen and finds that the soldiers have eaten and drank all that she prepared for breakfast. The soldiers beg for her to cook more. Vyry obliges and ends up frying chicken for so long that she loses track of time. Meanwhile, the soldiers vandalize the house, cart off all of John Dutton’s stored liquor, and seize the livestock. A large group of freed slaves come along, after having followed the soldiers. They, too, come along hungry, “and some [are] sick and diseased with running sores” (316). Jim is among them, and Vyry is shocked to see him again. He announces his intention to marry May Liza, who was his sweetheart on the plantation, and that Caline will come to live with them in Alabama. They invite Vyry along, but she insists upon waiting for Randall Ware. Jim tells her that he last saw Ware in Atlanta, where he became so ill at a Union camp that he’s likely dead. Vyry still insists upon waiting for him.

It’s late afternoon when Jim, May Liza, and Caline depart with the Union soldiers and the contraband freed slaves, leaving Vyry to look after Miss Lillian and her children, who are hungry. Vyry cooks for them. Jim asks why they’re staying behind to work now that they’re free. Vyry tells him that they must still work, despite being free. She also tells Jim that she promised his father that she would wait. However, this isn’t true. Instead, she’s afraid to leave. Jim goes outside to talk to a friend he has made among the contraband freed slaves—a man with whom he shares the fried chicken that his mother has just cooked. The man says on, hanging “around the back door of the kitchen” (321) even after Vyry stops cooking and goes back to her former cabin to rest.