James A. Huston

Violet Storm James A. Huston

Violet Storm was beautiful. She also was strong and intelligent. She stood firm and defiant against Yankee soldiers who overran her South Carolina Plantation, against Scalawags who stole her cotton and tried to take her land, and against suitors who wanted to steal her person during the long absence of her husband, Brent Sutler, in the Confederate Navy. Many volumes have been written about the Civil War; not so many about the Reconstruction-the twelve years of Yankee military occupation and Scalawag-Carpetbagger government that followed. For many Southerners the Reconstruction was a worse ordeal than the War itself. It was worse in South Carolina than in other states, perhaps because South Carolina was the first to secede and the first to fire a shot-at Fort Sumter-in the Civil War. This is the story of a woman who was determined to hold her family together and to bring back a measure of prosperity during those trying times. How did people cope with the Reconstruction? Some, like Brent's brother, went to the Far West or Mexico to get a new start. Some, like Violet's sisters and some of the neighbors, moved to the city. Some, like the neighbors across the way, resisted change. Some resorted to active resistance in vigilante groups. Some, like Violet's grandmother, lived in their memories and hoped for the best. Some, like the slaves who never returned, drifted to cities and became pawns of their alien masters. Some collaborated with the enemy and became Scalawags. But Violet and Brent were determined to hold to the best of the agrarian Old South and also to adapt to new conditions. They combined their efforts in maintaining a plantation with free labor and new machinery, running a mercantile business and a railroad, and participating in state politics. And still they found time to found a school for promising but impoverished children, black and white. Violet always insisted that Southern civilization had not been swept away by the Yankee conquest any more than the Atheni