New Civil War Detective A Complex Character

Brother Ced Buckley, the main character in the new murder mystery Burning Rage, has been compared to G.K. Chesterton’s famous Catholic sleuth, Father Brown. While Brown solved capers in the early 20th Century, Buckley fights crime in the closing days of the Civil War. In Burning Rage, when Union cavalryman Tupper Long finds the horribly mutilated corpses of a Kentucky regiment, he knows who killed them and why. But Long doesn’t know the whole story. To see justice done, General Sherman turns to Buckley, a peg-legged former Confederate soldier who has dedicated his life to the Rule of St. Benedict—and to crime detection.


Van Dyke's Portrait of a Benedictine Monk.

 Brother Cedric Patrick Buckley is a complicated new literary character with a complex pedigree. We first met him in my previous novel, Soldiers Just Like You, on the battlefield during the Charleston campaign of 1863. That summer, Charleston is besieged by a powerful Union force on land and by sea.

Buckley is a private in the Confederate army, defending his city against invasion. When a Union attack approaches Charleston along the Stono River, he is badly wounded, his leg shattered. The campaign is famous for being the first time the black troops of the 54^th Massachusetts are sent into battle.

Later on, the 54^th finds immortality when it takes part in the assault on Battery Wagner. Their exploits there were chronicled in the movie Glory. But prior to that battle, the 54^th makes a stand at a place called Grimball’s Landing on James Island, and this is where they find the Confederate boy soldier, unable to move and threatened by an ensuing wildfire.

The black men find it in their hearts to rescue Buckley; a selfless, spontaneous act that touches off a series of serendipitous events. Dozens of black men of the 54^th are captured in the subsequent Battle of Battery Wagner and South Carolina decides to make an example of them by charging them with being slaves in rebellion, a capital offense. Buckley becomes a surprise witness at the 54^th’s trial, attesting to their status as bona fide Union soldiers, soldiers no different from other men in blue and the equal of those who fought for the South.

When defense attorney Nelson Mitchell asks Buckley if he was afraid when he saw Negroes with guns, he characterized his rescue this way:

Detail of the 54th Massachusetts Monument.

“Well, sir, I didn’t notice they were Negroes…No, I didn’t take note of their black skin…It didn’t matter if they were Negroes anyway. They were helping me—saving me—saving my life. I didn’t know they were Negroes until you told me they were and that they were on trial here in Charleston.”

When Mitchell, a historical figure who really defended the 54^th in 1863, tells the court that Buckley believed his rescuers were sent by God, the young soldier reveals his motivation for taking a religious vocation:

“I want to be a priest now, because I lived. Maybe I will be the first one-legged priest in South Carolina.”

Mitchell judges that Buckley already exhibits the dedication and intellect that make him the monk-detective who will perform so ably in Burning Rage. The attorney glibly responds with an old Irish-ism that means he will be well-suited for the profession. “You won’t come to the priesthood on one leg, my man,” Mitchell replies ironically, considering Buckley’s handicap. From this episode in Soldiers Just Like You, we  glimpse Buckley’s wisdom and open mindedness; we see the young monk’s innate ability to see men as individuals, not concerned whether they are black or white.

But readers of Burning Rage will see that Brother Buckley is not only wise and even-minded, he is dedicated to his faith and devoted to his vows. He is sincere, but not so pious as to be off-putting. He can be playful at times, and sarcastic if it suits him. He shows justifiable anger over the conduct of the war, unimpressed as he is by the politicians and the generals.

He is usually soft-spoken, but he is not a pushover. He is talented but not an egotist. He is well-read for one so young, but not didactic. He has concluded that slavery is evil, but understands its evolution in America. He has experienced the epiphany that the war’s aims have changed from a second revolution for sectional independence to a fight to secure liberty for all.


Kurz & Allison's print of the storming of Battery Wagner.

Like G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, Brother Buckley’s manner and looks belie this complex man and shrewd detective. The former Confederate still wears gray, the gray robes of the Benedictine Order of the time. Because there is a dearth of proper prosthetic devices, he lumbers about with a wooden peg crafted from his grandfather’s blackthorn walking stick. He seems sickly and vulnerable, but he is battle-tested.

When General Sherman asks him peevishly why he tends to amend each address to him with “my friend,” he answers matter-of-factly. “You’ll excuse my presumption, sir. It’s merely a peculiar affectation of mine, a way of speaking. You see, General, I have been a soldier. I have seen war. I have been shot in battle. I want everyone I meet to be my friend.” In that statement, we see the essence of Brother Buckley. He realizes that he has been given a gift, a second life, a second chance; an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and sow friendship in a reunited country.

Confederate soldier, Benedictine brother, Civil War detective. Explore the complex humanity of Brother Ced Buckley. Peer into the quaint world of the Civil War South. Read Burning Rage and Soldiers Just Like You. Both are available at Amazon.com.

Five Things You Don't Know About Civil War Armies

As we remember the sacrifice of the American soldier on Memorial Day 2015, here's some insight into the world of the men who served in Civil War armies.

1. THEY FOUGHT LIKE CATS AND DOGS.

Tactically speaking, Civil War armies act more like cats than dogs. If you’ve ever tripped over a cat that chooses to sleep right in the middle of the family room floor, you know that cats feel safer in wide open spaces. Cats, big and small, want to size up enemies or eye prey from a distance. Likewise armies need open spaces to mass an attack, maneuver quickly or retreat if they are overmatched. A lion out on the savannah uses open spaces in much the same way. Dogs tend to hole up in a lair. At the time, Robert E. Lee considered his defensive position on the Sunken Road at Fredericksburg fatally flawed because if the Confederate line was overwhelmed, there was nowhere to retreat.

Union and Confederate armies fight the Battle of Nashville in December 1864.

 

2. THEY KNEW NAPOLEON COULDN’T SHOOT STRAIGHT

Though considered suicidal by modern observers, Civil War assaults were no more foolhardy than infantry attacks in any other war. If you’ve ever watched a Civil War movie, you’ve probably disgustedly asked: Why aren’t they hiding behind trees and picking off the enemy from one-thousand yards? Civil War armies used classic Napoleonic tactics necessitated by the limits of the weaponry of the time. Even rifled muskets had a short effective range and limited direct fire accuracy. Use of these single-shot, barrel-loaded shoulder arms meant that effective firepower must be massed firepower, fired in a volley and must get close to its target--fifty to one hundred yards, not one-thousand.

3. THEY DIDN’T KNOW WALTZING MATILDA. THAT WAS WWI!

Civil War formations did not waltz into battle or stand and fire on an open field. If you’ve ever watched a modern day reenactment you may think columns of men slow-stepped across a field or lines of infantry stood on a ridge and calmly fired away. In reality, the idea was to use speed and timing, along with overwhelming firepower, to carry the enemy line. An effective attacking commander looked for a weak spot in the other army’s line; a thinly held post or a unit that seemed untrained, ill-lead, or out of ammunition. A successful assault force kept close together and closed on the enemy using bluster, guile, speed, or cover. Once within the effective range of their muskets, the attackers might let the other line expend a volley, withstanding the fire briefly. But then they struck quickly while the enemy was reloading. Simply put, the plan was to come down on the front with the most men, still closely dressed, firing together into the face of the enemy. This was what these Civil War soldiers were drilled to do. A unit that seized the initiative and executed the evolution properly would carry the position. Believe it or not, this was often the case, but sometimes it did not carry the position because the enemy was strong in number, well supplied, well-drilled, battle tested and expertly commanded.

4. THEY SLAUGHTERED MILLIONS OF HORSES

Logistically, the most important “foot soldiers” in Civil War armies were the ones with four feet. Without horses and mules, the armies could not travel, eat, or shoot. There were about six million horses in the entire United States when war broke out. Estimates reckon that between one and three million horses were killed during the war. Even at the lower estimate, that means nearly two horses died for every soldier lost. Mules died too. Six-mule teams pulled the wagons that supplied both sides. Monstrous wagon trains transported troops, food, munitions, uniforms and other supplies across the continent. General Sherman’s force in Georgia traveled with 5,000 wagons and well over 30,000 horses and mules.

Union Telegraph Corps wagon train in Richmond 1865.

At Atlanta, the Union train stretched for sixty miles. Horses carried thousands of cavalrymen into battles. Mules muscled thousands of artillery pieces onto contested fields along with accompanying caissons rolling along with powder, shot and shell. Ambulance and Engineer Corps also utilized these beasts of burden. Horses carried each army’s officer corps, and a multitude of couriers and scouts. Army commanders knew how precious the equine resource was. In one action, a retreating General Phillip Sheridan slaughtered 2,000 of his own mounts rather than allow them to fall into the hands of the Confederates.

5. THEY DIDN’T TWEET OR HAVE 4G COVERAGE

Civil War armies didn’t have smart phones, texts or tweets. Communications in battle relied on couriers on horseback, unit flags, drums and bugles, semaphore signals and in rare instances hot air balloons and field telegraphs. Command and control is an army commander’s most important function in a fight, but Civil War communications were decidedly “analog.” Unit flags could help army HQ pinpoint where the battle line stood or faltered, but this was by no means foolproof along a smoky, chaotic battlefront that often ranged for miles. The soldier could not hear shouted orders once the thunder of the battle commenced and bugle calls to charge or retreat often were muffled as well. Couriers could be injured, captured or killed in the course of delivering important messages.

And technology was not ready to fill in these gaps. At the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, the trailing wires of incipient field telegraphs were trampled and destroyed making the electric gadgets all but useless. Aeronaut Thaddeus Lowe used hot air balloons tethered behind Union lines to monitor the action on battlefields across Virginia early in the war, but the army did not appreciate the innovation and the Balloon Corps as it was called was disbanded by 1863. Considering all this, it is a wonder that army commanders had any notion what went on during a battle involving fifty to two hundred thousand men. One can imagine Fighting Joe Hooker yelling, “Can you hear me now?” as Stonewall Jackson folded up the flank of his 120,000-man army at Chancellorsville.

Thaddeus Lowe demonstrates his balloon.

RETRO-TECHIES, THE 2^ND AMENDMENT AND BURNING RAGE

In the course of the war technological innovations changed the nature of Civil War armies and how they fought. Recently I had the pleasure of taking my son and a friend of his to the national competition of the North-South Skirmish Association. The group maintains the knowledge and use of the weapons of the Civil War. The men and women of the N-SSA are not re-enactors, though they do dress as the units did. They are competitive marksmen, historians, skilled mechanics and artful gunsmiths.

At their permanent base, Fort Shenandoah near Winchester, Virginia, you can watch this brain trust of “retro-techies” preserve, repair, maintain and shoot Civil War muskets, revolvers, carbines and artillery. Once you witness how much maintenance and practice goes into the effective use of these throwback weapons, you will not doubt what the authors of the Second Amendment meant by the right to keep and bear arms. The weapons the founders knew, only a bit removed from these Civil War guns, have to be kept handy, cleaned often, and practiced with regularly for them to be of any use when needed.

In my new book, Burning Rage, I try to accurately portray the realities of Civil War armies in battle. Specifically the book opens with Judson Kilpatrick’s cavalry raid of Richmond in 1864 and his assault of Confederate batteries on Brook Hill north of the Confederate capital. The Union leader believed timing, speed, overwhelming force, and massed firepower would carry the heights there.

If you are one of those armchair generals who asks why Civil War armies charged well-defended positions, ponder these questions: What makes a football team think it can run the ball up the middle on an All-Pro defensive line?  Like a Civil War army, a team’s coaches believe proper execution of a good plan by the right personnel will open up a hole. Does that calculation always lead to victory for army or team? Is execution the only difference between success and failure on a football field? Or is a different kind of execution always the likely result for an army’s attacking force?

Immerse yourself in the life of Civil War armies. Read Burning Rage, a Civil War mystery featuring Confederate soldier-turned-detective Ced Buckley. Pick up a copy at Amazon.com.

Baltimore: Of Riots, Martial Law and the Preakness

In Burning Rage, my new Civil War mystery, smuggler Nathaniel Tilghman arranges to meet Confederative operatives at the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore.

Construction of the Benjamin Latrobe designed edifice began in 1806, under the leadership of Archbishop John Carroll, the founder of Georgetown University, and his cousin Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. It was America’s first cathedral and today is designated both a national shrine and a basilica. It is the seat of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

A 19th Century engraving of the old Baltimore Cathedral.

 In Burning Rage, Confederate raider Raphael Semmes wants Tilghman to sneak a shipment of Confederate gold into Baltimore. Why Baltimore? Of course the sea captain is originally from Tilghman Island, and knows the city well. Of more practical importance is the mid-Atlantic port’s proximity to Richmond, the Confederate capital. But perhaps most important is the presence in Baltimore of a network of Southern operatives that goes back to the attempt on Abraham Lincoln’s life as he passed through the city to assume his duties as president in February 1861.

The Pinkerton detectives who uncovered the plot to kill the new president believed it was orchestrated by George Procter Kane, Baltimore’s marshal of police, and the city’s Democratic mayor, George William Brown. Baltimore, run by the Democratic Party as it still is today, simmered with Southern sympathies. Indeed Lincoln garnered only 1,100 of the 30,000 votes Baltimore cast for president.

By April, riots erupted, targeting Union troops passing through Baltimore heading for Washington. When a Massachusetts regiment was set upon by a mob, four soldiers were killed and another thirty-six were wounded. The troops killed twelve civilians. To restore order Lincoln and his generals declared martial law, suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus and arrested Kane, Brown and anyone else who opposed the Republican administration. The arrestees included newspaper editor Francis Key Howard, the grandson of Francis Scott Key, who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Ironically Howard was imprisoned at Fort McHenry where Key had witnessed “bombs bursting in air” and “the twilight’s last gleaming” during the British bombardment of Baltimore in the War of 1812.

The outrages of the riots, martial law and unconstitutional arrests did not sit well with the city’s Democrats. James Randall Ryder, a Baltimore native who lost a friend in the riots, was inspired to pen “Maryland, My Maryland,” a staunchly Confederate poem, which will be sung by the revelers at the Preakness horse race this weekend. It is still Maryland’s state song.

Sisters of Charity in Civil War camp. Note the winged cornettes.

In Burning Rage, historic Baltimore is the backdrop where certain priests and nuns connected with the cathedral collaborate with Confederate agents and a fictionalized Marshal Kane to help Tilghman hide the gold from Union forces. These religious, including “butterfly nuns,” so-called after the winged cornettes that some orders wore then, help the Confederates out of personal allegiance rather than church policy.

Though the Catholic Church took no official stand in the war, it accepted slavery where it existed and even owned slaves where it was legal. Northern bishops supported the North and Southern bishops like Richmond’s John McGill and Charleston’s Patrick Lynch, supported the South. The pontiff, Pope Pius IX, voiced sympathy for the Confederacy, sending Jefferson Davis (who had attended Catholic school as a youth) a symbolic crown of thorns in 1864.

In Burning Rage, the Southerners in the cathedral end up fighting their way out after Union forces charge the altar looking for the gold. Eventually the Rebels escape into the building’s unfinished crypt, two levels below the sanctuary, hidden one level below the undercroft.

A modern photo of the Baltimore Basilica's crypt.

There is no more historic place for Catholics in America than the Baltimore Basilica. From the beginning of English settlement, Maryland was granted to Lord Calvert as a refuge colony for British Catholics. Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, America’s first saint, founded the Sisters of Charity in Emmitsburg. The Venerable Father Michael J. McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus, was ordained in the basilica. Both Saint John Paul II and Blessed Mother Teresa graced its aisles.

In 1866 President Andrew Johnson attended a church council there calling for the evangelization of newly freed slaves and the Indian people. It was from Baltimore in 1808 that the Church created four new dioceses in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Bardstown, Kentucky. And it was from Baltimore that the American Church began its Catholic schools program guided by the Baltimore Catechism.

For more on Catholics in the Civil War and especially in the Confederacy, read my non-fiction book, Clear the Confederate Way! The Irish in the Army of Northern Virginia. To enjoy a good mystery that includes the charm of old Baltimore, read Burning Rage: A Ced Buckley Civil War Mystery, available at Amazon.com.

 

 

Some Great Characters Sailed Civil War Seas

There is high seas adventure in Burning Rage, the new Civil War mystery featuring Confederate soldier turned Benedictine monk Ced Buckley. By the spring of 1864 Commander Raphael Semmes’ Alabama is nearing the end of its career as a Rebel merchant raider.

 

A Currier & Ives print commemorates the sinking of the Alabama off Cherbourg, France. The French transitional Impressionist Edouard Manet painted a similar scene after reading news accounts of the Alabama’s battle with the U.S.S. Kearsage. From the Library of Congress Collection.

 

Semmes, born in Maryland, has traversed the globe as the captain of Alabama, a swift and well-armed British-built screw-sloop. He has menaced Union shipping, capturing more than sixty-two merchant vessels, most of which he burned to the water line. In his own words, Semmes considered the Alabama an inexorable staghound and a merchantman a panting breathless fawn.

But by the time of our story, the Alabama is being hunted in earnest by the Union navy and Semmes and his famous ship are exhausted. Piracy, it seems, even legally sanctioned piracy, is a young man’s game. Semmes, who served in the United States Navy from 1826 to 1860, including a stint during the Mexican War, was no spring chicken in 1864. In Burning Rage, the Alabama is in Capetown, South Africa, where Semmes meets one of the book’s fictional characters, Captain Nathaniel Tilghman, a rascally Marylander. Tilghman still dabbles in the slave trade though trans-Atlantic human trafficking had been abolished de jure in 1859.

Tilghman skippers a sidewheel clipper ship, the Salem, and meets Semmes in Capetown’s seamy Chinese quarter. Semmes has a business proposition for Tilghman, to smuggle a shipment of gold destined for the Confederate government into Baltimore.

Thus begins a sea adventure that features a naval battle with a Union warship, and leads the Salem to an open air slave market in the Portuguese controlled Cape Verde Islands. Tilghman finds friends in Sao Miguel on the island of Santiago; former Confederate officer Slim John Sweeney and his wife Carmen, who help him escape from a riotous mob of Portuguese thieves.

 

This tobacco company advertisement depicts the Yorktown, a three-masted clipper ship, modified with steam powered sidewheels. Nathaniel Tilghman’s fictional Salem  had a similar configuration in Burning Rage. The Library of Congress Collection.

 

Subsequently he comes to trust one of the very Africans he’d tried to sell in Sao Miguel. The slave trader and his odd crew sail for Baltimore, delivering the gold to Confederate operatives at the city’s Catholic cathedral.

By June 1864, Semmes and the Alabama are bottled up by the Union navy in Cherbourg, France, where Semmes had put in to resupply the Confederate raider. When Semmes tries to make a run for it, he is confronted by the Kearsage, a Union sloop-of-war. The ensuing Battle of Cherbourg was chronicled by the French painter Edouard Manet, who read newspaper accounts of the battle and quickly produced “The Sinking of the Alabama.” Within a month it was on display in a print shop in Paris, bringing the demise of the Confederate raider to the world in vivid color. Today the painting is owned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which has not displayed it for many years. Besides Manet, the Alabama’s exploits inspired many a romantic. An Afrikaner folk-song, “Daar Kom die Alibama,” became popular in South Africa after Semmes’ 1863 expedition to Capetown. The raider’s campaigns also spawned an English sea chanty, “Roll Alabama, Roll.”

Raphael Semmes statue, Mobile.

As the hardest of the die-hards, Semmes could inspire such romance. Off Cherbourg, as the Rebel ship sank by the stern, Semmes threw his cutlass in the ocean rather than surrender it. The commander and some of his crew escaped and were rescued by a private British yacht, which was ironically named the Deerhound. (Semmes thought the Alabama a staghound and is fished out of the sea by a Deerhound!) The Confederate skipper is taken to England where he is hailed as a hero by some. Shortly, he returns to the C.S.A., where he is promoted to rear admiral and commands Richmond’s James River Squadron for a time.

Later he is given a commission as an army brigadier general and leads his city sailors as an infantry unit dubbed the Naval Brigade. Part of this outfit fights with Lee at Sayler’s Creek on the way to Appomattox. Semmes though escapes with other sailors and joins Joseph Johnston’s army in North Carolina. After the war, Semmes serves as a judge and teaches literature and philosophy at the forerunner of Louisiana State University. He died in 1877 and is buried in Mobile in the Old Catholic Cemetery.

In Burning Rage, Captain Tilghman and his new friends set sail for Norfolk and eventually fall in with a Southern spy, another interesting character based on a real life Confederate agent who later became the president of Virginia Tech. If you like great characters like Raphael Semmes and Nathaniel Tilghman, try reading Burning Rage, a Ced Buckley Civil War Mystery, available at Amazon.com.

 

 

Civil War Trains Had All the Bells and Whistles

Burning Rage’s cover illustration is an 1872 Currier & Ives print entitled “Prairie fires of the Great West.” It depicts an indomitable steam locomotive crossing the prairie despite a fearsome wild fire. The image would have amazed the average 19^th Century traveler, showing how the mighty iron horse could blithely traverse the dangerous American frontier. And prairie fires were notoriously fast, sweeping in mercurial and capricious destruction with the relentless plains wind. But the iron horse could run with the wind, according to Currier & Ives.

 

The Western & Atlantic Rail Road’s 4-4-0 locomotive, The General, famous for its capture by Union raiders in 1862.  Confederates chased the train from Kennesaw to Ringgold, Georgia. This 1907 photograph is from the Library of Congress Collection.

 

In 1872, the picture must have symbolized the triumph of technology over nature; revealing in vivid color that locomotives and the new Trans-Continental rails had opened the west for progress and opportunity.

I chose this print for the cover to emphasize the importance of the railroads to the times and because exciting portion of Burning Rage involves a train hijacking (to use a modern term) and a running battle aboard the fictional Great Dismal Swamp Express.

The iron horse still holds a place in the romantic quadrants of the American mind. As I write this, I can hear the whistle and rumble of a passing Norfolk Southern freight not five hundred yards away from my front door. Though the trains are computer-controlled, clean-diesel behemoths now, the whistle is decidedly ‘analog,’ harkening back to a time when the locomotive was a relatively simple mechanical hulk of iron and steel, wood-fired, sooty, smoky, combining simple elements of water and heat, to create enormous power.

Those old locomotives resounded with the bells and whistles that are still with us today. They communicate, however rudimentarily, a train’s movement or intention to move; a hooter to clear a crossing, a bell to signal a depot or yard evolution.

I still like the sound of the passing trains. Perhaps the romance of that sound is why we like our modern gadgets, our vehicles especially, with all the “bells and whistles” today. But we would find the old stink pots dirty, noisy and uncomfortable—and they were slooowwww—fifteen or twenty miles an hour was making good time. You’d get a good long look at that prairie fire as you passed it for miles on your way further west.

For much of the train battle in Burning Rage, the Great Dismal Swamp Express is a runaway train, a redball, reaching perilous speeds of fifty miles per hour on a downward grade. They really couldn’t run with the wind, outpace a prairie fire. In reality the old locomotives crept along like snails. When we realize how slow they traveled we understand the romantic portrayals of Old West bandits on horseback riding down a passenger train, revolvers blazing. That would have been entirely possible. There are many contemporary accounts of swash-buckling train robberies. One of the more famous tales involved the Union capture of The General, a Confederate 4-4-0 locomotive train, in Georgia in 1862. The story led to both a Buster Keaton silent picture and an even later Disney feature film.

It has been said that the Civil War came by train, but even as early as the 1840s, the steam locomotive was transforming America. The building of railroads employed thousands of new immigrants, work that allowed them to forge a place for themselves in their new homeland. The railroads brought the country countless new communities, large and small, staked out along wherever the tracks led. Big Rail developed great cities of industry, brought all manner of goods to expanding markets, and demanded economic growth on a grand scale to feed the capitalist powerhouse America had become.

So it is not surprising that trains played an important role in the war. The steam locomotive and the burgeoning American rail system were cutting edge technology by the time of the Civil War. In 1861, Stonewall Jackson utilized the cars of the Manassas Gap Railroad to bring large numbers of battle ready troops to the front at the Battle of Manassas. This is said to be the first time in history that large numbers of soldiers were moved to a battlefront by rail. It started a trend that saw thousands of men, horses and countless tons of supplies ferried by trains for the duration of the war. Thus the railroads became strategically important to both sides. Major battles, important raids and innumerable skirmishes were fought to control or destroy lines, depots and junctions across the South.

In Burning Rage, the action-packed train chapters capture the romance of the rails, and provide a literary vehicle as the sweeping narrative moves from Virginia to South Carolina.  I’ve been careful to not give away why the Great Dismal Swamp Express is hijacked; I’ve not revealed who hijacked it or who tries to take back the cab. I hope you’ll hop aboard to find out these answers for yourself in this runaway Ced Buckley Civil War Mystery. Read, enjoy, and tell your friends about Burning Rage.