Love and war

Love and War ( original title : Love and War ) is a historical novel by the American author John Jakes from 1984. It is the continuation of the novel The Heirs of Cain from 1982 and middle part of the trilogy about the families Hazard and Main in the time before, during and after the American Civil War . Love and War portrays the fate of the Hazards and the Main during the civil war.

action

The United States in 1861, shortly after the attack on Fort Sumter : the signs point to war between the Union in the north and the southern states, which have separated as the Confederate States of America . The Main and Hazard families, who have been friends for many years, are on different sides of the conflict. In the north, brothers George and Stanley Hazard work for the Department of War in Washington . In the south, Charles Main fights in the Confederate cavalry. Plantation owner Orry Main marries his long-time lover Madeline after her husband Justin, whom she left for Orry, dies. Then he accepts an offer to work for President Jefferson Davis's Confederate government in Richmond .

Due to the war, George and Orry only have contact through individual letters smuggled across the border. With one of the letters, George manages to get Orry a message that George's brother Billy has been imprisoned in Richmond. Orry notifies Charles and he frees Billy, who can return to the north unscathed. Orry uncovered a conspiracy against President Davis, in which his sister Ashton, her husband and the speculator Lamar Powell, also Ashton's lover, and the old adversary of the Main, Elkanah Bent, who defected from the north, are involved. Orry defeats Bent in battle and lets himself be transferred from the War Department to a unit of his West Point college friend George Pickett . Orry is shot dead shortly afterwards while trying to help an injured Northerner. Madeline, who fled the besieged Richmond in Pennsylvania to her sister-in-law Brett's house at George Hazard's house, collapses when she receives news of her husband's death.

Shortly before the end of the war, Mont Royal is attacked and burned down by a gang of fled slaves and deserted soldiers. Cooper Main, who has returned to Mont Royal, and Charles, who happened to be present, cannot prevent this and only with difficulty save the lives of their remaining family members. George visits Mont Royal after the war and promises Cooper and Madeline financial support for the reconstruction. Charles learns that he has a son and goes west with his son.

Characters

Members of the Hazard family

George Hazard

George Hazard, owner of Hazard Iron Works in Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania and a graduate of West Point Military Academy , accepts an offer to resume his military career at the War Department of the Union Army under Secretary Simon Cameron after the start of the Civil War . He later switched to a railway construction unit.

Stanley Hazard

Stanley is George's older brother, but he's not particularly close to him. He is a civilian and yet, like George, works in the War Department, encouraged by his ambitious wife Isabel, he is primarily concerned with his personal gain. He also purchases a shoe factory that equips the Union Army with boots. At Isabel's instigation, he also sells shoes to the Southern Army. He becomes an alcoholic and has a lover who, at the insistence of Isabel, leaves him.

Virgilia Hazard

Virgilia, the oldest of the Hazard siblings, who broke with her family as a radical abolitionist , stands in front of the door one day in Lehigh Station, completely impoverished and neglected. Constanze and Brett give her refuge. She later worked as an army nurse under Dorothea Dix in a Washington hospital. She begins an affair with Congressman Sam Stout.

Billy Hazard

William "Billy" Hazard, the youngest son of the family, fought in the Civil War in a pioneer unit on the Union side. He is captured and imprisoned in Libby Prison , where he is subjected to inhumane conditions until he is freed by his friend Charles. Even after the war he stayed with the Union Army's pioneer unit.

Members of the Main family

Orry Main

Orry Main, a West Point graduate and veteran of the Mexican-American War , is George Hazard's best friend. He is the owner of the Mont Royal rice plantation in South Carolina , where he lives with his demented mother and Madeline LaMotte, who has abandoned her husband and found refuge on Mont Royal. Orry and Madeline get married after Justin LaMotte dies. After the Civil War broke out, he accepted an offer to return to military service on the staff of the Confederate Government under President Jefferson Davis . Dissatisfied with his work in the ministry, he allows himself to be transferred to a front-line unit and is shortly afterwards killed by an officer of the Union army when he tries to help him.

Madeline Main

Madeline is from New Orleans and is 1/8 African American . After abandoning her abusive husband Justin LaMotte, she found refuge at Orry Main on Mont Royal. After Justin dies of a gunshot wound, she marries Orry. When Orry goes to Richmond, she stays at Mont Royal to take care of Orry's stroke- affected mother, but follows her after Clarissa Main has recovered. She has to leave Richmond after Ashton reveals Madeline's African American roots to government officials. She goes through the front lines to see Constance and Brett at Lehigh Station. After the end of the war, she returned to the destroyed Mont Royal to rebuild it.

Cooper Main

Cooper is the older brother of Orry Main. He lived in Charleston and worked as an engineer and shipowner until the war. After the attack on Fort Sumter, he had given his shipyard and shipping company to the Confederation, although he had previously been critical of the secession. At the beginning of the war, Cooper went to England with his wife Judith and their two children to purchase ships as warships for the Confederate Army on behalf of the Confederate Arms Office. On the way back, his ship was seized and sunk by the Union Army's sea blockade, killing his son Judah. Marked by this event and changed in character, he took a position in the Confederate War Department, where he worked on the development of the HL Hunley submersible, among other things . After a nervous breakdown, he returns to Mont Royal with his wife and daughter, but cannot prevent its destruction by marauding slaves and deserters.

Ashton Main

Ashton is the younger sister of Cooper and Orry. She is married to James Huntoon, an increasingly unsuccessful and politically isolated attorney who works for the Confederate government in Richmond. At a ball, she meets Lamar Powell and begins an affair with him. She is investing with Powell in a ship that will break the Union's naval blockade and illegally export cotton and import luxury goods. She supports Powell's plans to form her own confederation. Elkanah Bent reveals Madeline's secret of her African American ancestry and Ashton confronts her at a public event. After Orry uncovered a conspiracy against President Davis, she must flee Richmond with Huntoon and Powell. The three set off for the west to build a new confederation with Powell's gold reserves. The trek with the gold is started and destroyed by the Apaches . Ashton is the only penniless to reach Santa Fe , where she learns that her husband has disinherited her.

Brett Main

Brett is the youngest of the four Main siblings. She is married to Billy Hazard and lives with his family in Pennsylvania, where she is initially exposed to hostility as a southerner. In the course of the war she changed her attitude towards colored people and helped Constance look after black orphans. At the end of the novel, she is pregnant by Billy.

Charles Main

Charles is the cousin of Orry and Cooper Main. In the Civil War he fought on the side of the Confederation as a cavalry scout. During the war, he met the widow Augusta Barclay and fell in love with her. His war experiences made him increasingly bitter and plans to return to Texas after the war and set up a farm there. He frees his friend Billy from Libby Prison. He ended his relationship with Augusta in order to be able to devote himself entirely to military service and to free her from worrying about him. After the end of the war, he learns that Augusta, pregnant by Charles, has gone to see her uncle in Washington. She died giving birth to their son; Charles finds his son in the care of Augusta's uncle, Brigadier General Duncan. Together with Duncan and his son, Charles sets out for the west to join the Union cavalry.

Elkanah Bent

Bent is from Ohio and was the instructor for George and Orry at Westpoint. Since, in his opinion, these have affected his career, he has set himself revenge on both of them. His role model is Napoleon Bonaparte . At the beginning of the war, Bent was an officer in the Union Army, was transferred from Washington to a Union Army training camp, and later to New Orleans , which was occupied by the Union , from where he deserted after a scandal. Under a false name, mediated by the unsuspecting Stanley Hazard, he can be recruited as a spy for the Union. After completing an operation involving disproportionate use of force, he is released and goes over to the Confederates, where he seeks connection with Powell's revolutionary efforts. When this is revealed by Orry, Orry and Bent fight, with Bent being injured and falling into a river.

Lamar Powell

Powell is an influential southern businessman. Huntoon introduces him to his wife Ashton, and Ashton and Powell start an affair. Powell and Ashton invest in a ship that can break the sea blockade and smuggle luxury goods into the Confederation, making both of them rich. He also rallies like-minded people to overthrow President Davis and build a new confederation in the West. Huntoon and Bent join him. After the conspiracy fails, Powell sets out with the Huntoons to the west to build a new confederation with his gold reserves. On the way there, he murders James Huntoon, only to be murdered by rebellious Apaches shortly afterwards.

Historical events

The novel closely links the fictional fate of the Main and Hazard families with real people and historical events of the Civil War. Reference is made to numerous historical figures of the time with whom the fictional protagonists partly interact, including Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis , politicians such as Simon Cameron and numerous generals from both armies such as Thomas Jackson , George B. McClellan , Robert E. . Lee , Ulysses S. Grant , William T. Sherman , Wade Hampton III. and PGT Beauregard .

The setting of the novel is, among other things, the First Battle of the Bull Run , the battles at Shiloh and Sharpsburg . The Battle of Gettysburg is mentioned, but is not directly part of the plot of the novel. The attack on Abraham Lincoln is also discussed.

publication

Love and War entered the New York Times bestseller list at number 5 in 1984 and then rose to number 2 on the bestseller list. It was the fourth best-selling novel in the United States in 1984.

The German-language first edition was published in 1987 by Bastei-Lübbe .

filming

Love and War was filmed in 1986 by Warner Bros. Television as the second season (episodes 7-12) of the television miniseries North and South (German: Torches in the Storm ), which thanks to a star cast and elaborate equipment became an international success. The film version differs, much more than the film version of the first volume, from the novel. In particular, Orry survived the war in the film. Justin LaMotte dies in the film fighting Orry, not infection after a gunshot wound. Virgila Hazard is executed in the film adaptation at the end of the series for the murder of Congressman Greene, who does not appear in the novel. Stanley doesn't make a career in Washington in the film adaptation, but works in the family business Hazard Iron behind his brother's back with inferior iron, for which he is ultimately held accountable. Instead of Billy, George is in Libby Prison in the film. As with the filming of the first volume, Cooper Main and his family do not appear in the film version. Brett spends the war in the film adaptation on Mont Royal instead of Lehigh Station. Bent is a northerner and defector in the novel, and a southerner from the beginning in the film adaptation. The character Lamar Powell does not appear in the film adaptation, his role as the leader of a conspiracy and lover of Ashton essentially takes Bent.

continuation

The sequel Heaven and Hell was released in 1987.