Chapter 12

A total of 117 men showed up by the specified time, and that was enough for a significant ambush. We spread out along the road in a dense woods and waited for the militia column to come to us. They showed up about 4:00 PM and were already tired from marching in the heat and humidity of Southern Georgia. There was almost no breeze, so they had no relief as they marched, and they were going through water at a rapid rate.

I’m not sure of exactly how it happened, but the 800 men were not marching as one group. The were broken into three groups, and the first group of approximately 300 men was what we were about to ambush. God, how kind you are! We had faced this kind of odds and always won handily, so we were much relieved when we saw the enemy. There was almost a mile separating the second group from the first, so we were very unlikely to be troubled by that second group during our fight with the first.

We opened fire when the officers leading the first group got even with the front end of our line. The result was what we expected: all of the leading officers were killed, and that sent a panic among the remaining men who had survived our first volley. They didn’t know where to shoot because they could not tell where their enemy was hiding. We had killed about two-thirds of the militia we could see before they figured out where our shots came from.

At that point, almost all of the men who could do so dropped their weapons and ran for the far side of the road. Unfortunately for some of them, there was a river very close to the road, and the river was infested with alligators. A few of the alligators ate well that day, and a few more of the men were trapped in quicksand. All in all, this was not a good day for this element of the militia.

At least one man did escape to warn the second element of the ambush, so we no longer had an easy target to work with. The second and third elements of the march, along with the few men from the first element who had escaped, all turned around and marched back north. Of course, they did not go far. They were headed for a large farm where they could camp for the night and regroup.

Meanwhile, our men went through the fallen militia on the road and shot or knifed those who were not yet dead. There was no love lost between our men and the militia! There was some looting, but we did not get much beyond papers from the officers because we had not brought wagons with us. I did send men after wagons to pick up all of the rifles: those could be converted into air guns as I got the chance to work on them. It took four wagons to pick up all of the rifles, some of which were loaded, but had not been fired.

We now had to decide how to treat the remaining militia. We figured that we had very little chance of catching them in another similar ambush, so we had to consider engaging in a more equitable face-to-face fight. I was not happy with that prospect, but we did not seem to have much choice.

We really wanted to drive the militia away from our homes and families, so we came up with the strategy of attacking from the south and allowing all who wanted to do so to run away toward the north. We caught the militia at the perfect time from our point of view: they were in the process of making camp when we attacked.

This time, we attacked on foot along a very long front. Our guns did very little to betray us, and we could get off many shots while our enemy was limited to 3-4 shots per minute. Not only that, they had to stand to reload, and that was not something that we had to do. Therefore, our usual practice was to dash forward under covering fire and kneel or lie down to shoot while the second echelon moved forward under the cover of the first echelon.

This step-wise movement gave the enemy very little chance to get off a second aimed shot, though they might fire once if their rifles were already loaded. We were very deliberate with this advance, and it gave the militia time to retreat if they wanted to. Within 10-15 minutes of our initial contact with the militia, we had already killed a significant number of them, and many more had started to run.

Unfortunately, this time, we did lose some of our men, both killed and seriously wounded. The upsetting part was that the seriously wounded men were going to die simply because we did not have the doctors or the medicine to care for them. Our women who were acting as nurses did what they could, but everybody, including the wounded men, knew that they were doomed. All told, we lost 11 men, but there was some consolation in that the militia lost many, many more.

At first thought, it would seem impossible that we could win such easy victories, but the militia was grossly overconfident and poorly trained. They usually won because they outnumbered their opponents, and both sides were using equally obsolescent weapons. Our repeating rifles would have had a much slimmer advantage against Spencers, Henrys, or Winchesters, but nobody in the CSA was going to spend the money to buy such weapons from the Damyankees. I wondered how long it would be before other people were buying such weapons from us.

Anyway, by the end of an hour, it was obvious that we had won the war with this bunch of militia, and it was not likely that the Georgia Legislature would stand still for more money to be spent to fight us. We could now expect peace with the militia as long as we maintained the status quo, but I did not expect that to last for long.

Maudville had simply run its course as the center of our little rebellion. We were sure to get so many new immigrants to our cause that we had to move to an established community. From our point of view, Albany was the ideal place for us to move to obtain a viable infrastructure. Undoubtedly, many of the current residents would leave as soon as we moved in, but that would only help us by making housing immediately available. I brought up the subject of us moving to Albany to the people of Maudville, and the vast majority agreed that it was a good idea. The few that objected to the move were welcome to stay in Maudville, but I did not expect them to stay long.

I was unhappy about showing up in Albany as an invading force, but I could not see any way around it. At least, we had enough money in our treasury to pay the residents who moved out a bounty of CSA$20 for their homes, and that was a veritable fortune to most commoners. That would leave us less than CSA$1,000 in our treasury, but we expected to get it back when we sold goods to the surrounding plantations.

We were not yet ready to free all of the serfs and slaves in Dougherty County, but that was coming. The plantations could still survive with their share-croppers, but they would lose the free labor and sex that they otherwise got. Hell, they could afford it!

One morning, I showed up at the mayor’s office and announced that Albany was now our property. I had 67 men-at-arms backing me up, and they were all armed with the new weapons. I told him that any people who wanted to stay were welcome to do so, but there was no more serfdom or slavery allowed within the city limits of Albany. Anybody who wanted to leave would be paid the CSA$20 for his house, but that offer was good for only two weeks. After that, anybody who left was out of luck as far as the bounty was concerned. I explained that every house in town would be visited this day by a delegation to explain the options.

I told the mayor to go home, because he no longer had a job. Naturally, he tried to bluster with me, but I listened for a while before drawing my pistol. I pointed it at him, and told him to get out before I pulled the trigger. That made the impression that I was looking for, and he left, grumbling all of the way.

I consulted with a lot of people and wrote up a new charter for Albany. Originally, I had thought of changing the town’s name from Albany to Maudville, but I figured that would cause too much confusion, so I dropped that idea. Once the new charter was written, I had copies printed and distributed to every adult resident with adult being defined as anyone 13 years old or older. Race did not matter. All citizens were equal. I did put at the bottom that this charter could and would be amended as appropriate.

Naturally, we made a big impression on the aristocrats who had owned property in Albany. All of the businesses were owned by them, and Jackson Beauregard was the main loser of property. Martha was “broken hearted” over this! I still did not know what he had done to her that night, and she had not forgiven him. All of the serfs and slaves who worked in town were automatically freed when we took over, and they were paid a living wage until we could work out a regular system of employment for them.

Meanwhile, we were getting a steady influx of serfs and slaves who ran away from their plantations. So far, we were able to house them in the abandoned houses, but that was not going to last forever. The plantation owners protested and wanted their “property” returned, but that we refused to do, and we backed up our refusal with guns. Thus, the plantation owners grumbled and protested to the legislature, but we held the upper hand, and nothing was done.