Chapter 16

I called for a referendum to vote on whether or not Haven would secede from Georgia. I visited every large town and most of the small ones promoting the idea that we should separate ourselves from Georgia and declare ourselves to be a sovereign country that did not permit slavery. Often it was difficult to find someone to argue the opposite side of the question, and that person was usually driven from the stage by the whistles and catcalls as he or she spoke.

Usually, the opposition speaker was a woman who argued that enough of our people had died in war, and passing this question was bound to bring on another one. I guess that, in a way, it was unfortunate that we had had so few casualties in our fights so far, and most people believed that we could beat the whole world if they were to attack us, especially if we had enough of the S2 rifles.

As soon as I was convinced that we should secede, I had ramped up production on all three versions of the rifle, with emphasis placed on the S2. Nevertheless, I wanted to make sure that we honored the contract for S1s for the English. I wanted foreign countries to see that Haven made a point of honoring all of its obligations.

As expected, the referendum passed with a massive majority, so we held a “Constitutional Convention” with both male and female representatives from all over Haven. Of course, the first thing passed by the Convention was a Declaration of Independence from Georgia and the CSA. A copy of the declaration was sent to Gov. Throckmorton in Atlanta and to the CSA in Richmond.

We found out later that Gov. Throckmorton received a scathing memo from the Secretary of State of the CSA that he should take care of those upstarts in Albany right away and stop messing around. Furthermore, the CSA was not going to send any troops, because they did not have any. The CSA depended entirely on the troops provided by the individual states, and there was no way the central government, such as it was, could force other states to support Georgia. Also, there was no way that the CSA was going to provide money to resolve what they saw as a problem belonging entirely to the state of Georgia.

Throckmorton actually did collapse when he saw that message. He spent three days flat on his back in bed with his blood pressure so high that all of the doctors called in were sure that he was about to die. Well, for some reason he did not die.

When he recovered enough, he landed on his generals with both feet. In essence, he demanded that they do something about “those clowns” in Dougherty County. As far as Throckmorton was concerned, we should be removed from the face of the Earth—he did not care how much it cost.

Okay, if that was the way the governor felt, then that was what the generals would do. The first thing they asked for was a general conscription order. The generals believed that they needed at least 10,000 more troops if they were going to win a fight with Enfield rifles against our S2s. They believed that the only way that they could win would be to swamp us with people faster than we could kill them.

The newspapers went wild with the story of this plan. Up until now, they had not paid much attention to Haven except to treat our Declaration of Independence as something of a joke. Of course, none of their reporters had ever faced our men equipped with the S2. The only feel for war any of them had was the War of 1861 in which both sides had mostly used the Enfield muzzle-loading rifle. Therefore, they could not understand how a measly place like Haven could hope to stand up to the army that had defeated the USA.

What sounded good, though, to the average commoner was that the CSA government would be paying good wages to soldiers who would be in the army for no more than three months and then be discharged with a pocket full of money. So what if it was paper money, as long as the banks promised to back it up? The thing that most people did not realize was that it took 6-12 months to train a modern army to fight stand up battles, which was what the generals knew how to fight. Nobody realized what we could do with guerrilla tactics.

Anyway, we figured that we had about six months to get ready for the invasion that was coming, and we had better get our collective asses in gear. Haven was already on what amounted as a war footing for us. I was not sure exactly how it happened, but our Constitutional Convention voted to turn itself into the Congress of Haven and appointed me as the general in charge. Hell, I was already doing most of that, so it made little difference to me. All I needed was a formal staff which I set about forming as soon as I was appointed.

So far, the best trained unit we had was David’s cavalry. I appointed him as a colonel, and had him appoint four captains to recruit more cavalry members. I was looking for four cavalry squadrons of 25 men each who were to be equipped with the S3.

Our infantry would be equipped with the S2. I wanted them to operate as much as possible as platoons of 32 men, a platoon sergeant and and officer, probably called Captain. The population of Haven fluctuated enough that it was impossible to predict just how many platoons we would have when the shooting started, but I wanted to get them organized with every able-bodied person in Haven having some training as a soldier.

I hoped to mix the races so that they would come to appreciate each other more by fighting together. Furthermore, I wanted to put some women into combat roles so that they would get the respect that they deserved. If this were more than a very short war, I expected that even children might be making a substantial contribution to our war effort. Dear God, I prayed that such a thing did not happen.

We did not have the money to waste on uniforms, so we continued with the red cloth on the left arm to identify us as soldiers. I hoped that would be sufficient because that was all that we could afford.

Seven months later, Albany was bursting at the seams with people who had come to join us in our battle against the Aristocracy. That was what it was, and there were no aristocrats left in Haven. The smarter ones had run to places like Atlanta and Savannah, and the dumber ones had been killed by their remaining slaves. I doubt that there were many people in Haven who were not working overtime to try to do everything they could to defeat the Georgia State Army (GSA). By this time, I thought that the Haven Army (Haven Army) could whip any army in the CSA.

We had an advantage in that we would refuse to fight the standard stand-up battles that were taught in the military schools. We were strictly guerrilla fighters, and we planned to stick to that strategy. If nothing else, that should keep us from losing too many people in a single battle, but none of us thought that might happen. Sure we were cocky, but we just looked upon it as esprit de corps. “Bring them on. We will just knock them off like we always have!”

Throckmorton had completely run out of patience with his generals. His most recent order was to attack the rebels or he would find somebody who would. With that kind of ultimatum, the GSA finally began to move. It had to travel from its base just out of Augusta by several trains. There were just too many troops for one train to handle them all. There was one train devoted to just the cavalry and their horses. Naturally, all of this activity could not be hidden from the newspapers, so we found out about it before the first train left Augusta.

Not all of the railroads in Georgia used the same gauge, so we knew which route the trains had to follow. We sent one of the cavalry squadrons to set blasting powder along the route. This was a mixed race and gender operation—there were two women troopers in the squadron and some of all three races. David left it up to the officer to choose how his people were to be used, but he insisted that the women have at least one chance at combat.

This was easy to arrange. The trains had to stop for the mid-day meal, so these were ideal for a cavalry attack. Naturally, the officers ate in one dining room while the common soldiers ate in another. Captain Henry, Haven Army, had an especially devilish plan in which he had his squadron wait until everybody was eating before the attack. Of course, as was standard doctrine, nobody was armed except for the few guards.