Southward Bound on a   Mississippi Steamer, 1863 excerpted from Lottie Deno: A Novel (2024)

by Frank Thurmond 
 I finally booked passage for myself and Mary
on a shiny new paddle wheel, triple-deck stern-
wheeler christened the New Orleans (after Robert
Fulton’s first commercial steamboat fifty years
earlier). I traveled to Pittsburgh with Mary, where
the New Orleans was docked on schedule. From
there, the paddle steamer would head south
down the Ohio River until reaching the Missis-
sippi at Cairo, Illinois, and thence downriver
through Memphis and Natchez and finally to
New Orleans after an almost three-month voyage
of over eighteen hundred miles.
One cold but sunny morning in early spring
1863, I found myself starting up the boarding
gangplank with Mary. We must have been some
sight too: a petite nineteen-year-old girl with flam-
ing red sunlit locks climbing the platform with
an ebony giant of a woman by my side. Lugging
our own respective baggage, too!
 * * * 
I knew our route would take us past Warsaw,
Kentucky, and that we would probably stop
there, so I would have to be careful to stay hidden
to avoid being spotted. This was made easier on
account of the women passengers being sep-
arated from the men for the most part and con-
fined to second-class “deck passage”—along with
immigrants and servants.
I had other plans, however: I had spotted an
elderly gentleman whom I recognized from the
poker club in Detroit and—in hopes of an invite
to a private saloon in the upper deck—formed a
plan to ingratiate myself to him at the first op-
portunity. Women were, of course, generally kept
as far as possible from bars, following the out-
rageous notion that ladies and liquor should
never mix company. Despite such chauvinistic
policies, my little scheme worked brilliantly, and
for the remainder of the trip, I worked the poker
table to both the delight—and the increasing dis-
may—of the gentlemen passengers as the lone
lady gambler in their midst.
Not all were gentlemen, mind you: There were
ruffians aplenty aboard our ship, too, some of
them professional gamblers who made their liv-
ings preying on affluent yet naïve passengers. It
was the professional riverboat gambler you had
to watch out for, though. They were as mean and
crude and as dirty at cards as they come, and all
they ever did was cheat. I tried my best to avoid
these, as their wary eyes could easily spot the
most subtle sleights of hand that Daddy had
taught me. (Fortunately, thanks also to Daddy, I
knew most of their tricks too.) I set my sights in-
stead on the many young and chivalrous gen-
tlemen on board. I learned to use my wiles to
charm them into a round of poker, only to fleece
those innocent pigeons for all they had.
In this way, we made our progress slowly
 
 
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 south, with me raking in cash at the tables while
Mary waited patiently below decks for me to re-
turn and take her along for my afternoon peram-
bulations above decks and—when docked—at the
various landings along the way. (I would never
stroll alone without Mary, especially having ob-
served more than one sinister-eyed ruffian follow
my movements with a certain lusty malice, but
one look in turn from Mary’s evil eye could in-
timidate the devil himself.) Despite our ship
being Union-controlled, Mary was forced to stay
on the lower decks unless escorted by me. But be-
tween us, she knew that—in my mind—she was
now free as a bird and that it was just a question
of biding our time until I no longer had to play
the ruse of being a Southern slave heiress. Yet,
with the palpable tension on board among fellow
passengers from both North and South, we knew
we had best play our expected roles for now.
A few days past a brief stop in Cincinnati, I
saw the familiar old landing at Warsaw. We
stayed discreetly below decks in our cabin till, at
the piercing whine of a loud whistle, we felt the
jolt of the giant paddle wheel launch our ship
again with a sudden roar of steam power. I had
watched anxiously through a porthole window to
see if anyone I recognized boarded there. Nobody
did, but what I did see were troops of soldiers in
dark blue patrolling along the dock. Clearly, War-
saw was now under Federal occupation, and I
shuddered to think what might be happening
back home on the plantation. I could only pray
for them and hope to have news from Ellie Mae
upon arrival in New Orleans.
As I learned later, this was also the reason for
our safe passage downriver. By that time, Union
forces generally patrolled the rivers, with garri-
sons at the various ports and gunboats control-
ling river traffic to protect goods being
transported North. And so our vessel trudged its
steady ten miles per hour pace downstream, a rel-
atively uneventful journey once we got past the
roaring rapids at the treacherous Falls of the
Ohio just past Louisville. There—at the same
place where Lewis and Clark had once met up in
1803 to plan that famous little expedition of
their own—the Ohio River drops twenty-six feet
in the course of a mile over a rise of limestone
bedrock. At one point, our hardy captain feared
the water might be too low to proceed. But once
he and his crew had navigated us safely through,
we continued apace until finally meeting the
mighty Mississippi where the Ohio converges
with it just south of Cairo, Illinois. At that point,
the brown, sediment-laden water of the Ohio
flows into the greenish water of the Mississippi
River. Also green were the distant riverbanks,
where luscious pine forests bounded us on both
sides. Looking out at this beautiful scenery, I
hummed an old folk ballad I had heard once in
the Appalachians.
 * * * 
Now darlin,’ my darlin’
Don’t tell me no lie,
Tell me, where did you stay last night?
 In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun never shines,
I shivered when the cold wind blowed. 
 * * * 
There, where the landscape suddenly
opened up gloriously on both sides of the vast
river, I first felt an invigorating sense of genuine
freedom. I loved to stand in the open air of the
foredeck in the shadow of the pilot house, Mary
by my side, and inhale the perfume of flowers lin-
ing the rails—pungent gardenia and sweet azalea
blossoms. A frantic whir of tiny hummingbird
wings made a pleasant change from the accus-
tomed whine of mosquitoes and gnats. Nights
were especially magical, the way the dark roiling
water behind our ship’s paddle glinted moon-
light in its foam. In the darkness across the river,
the glow-worms big as lanterns illumined the
 
 
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 night. Yet nothing compared to looking up at the
night sky, where on clear nights, the stars ap-
peared like a billion pinpricks in some cosmic
blanket through which the light of Heaven bey-
ond drew enchanted constellations.
On such nights, the sultry, humid summer
air was often pierced with music when the joyful
banter of banjos and mandolins on deck would
sometimes compete for our attention with the
more sonorous melodies of the saloon piano. But
it was not always such clear sailing: Sometimes, a
summer storm would announce itself with a sud-
den clap of thunder, followed by the swift patter
of rain on the water below from which steam
would rise up as if the river were on fire. But
when lightning began to strike, and the clouds
emptied their giant buckets upon us in torrential
rain, Mary and I hightailed it below deck rather
than putting too much stock in Ben Franklin’s
lightning rods adorning the ship!
When we reached Memphis, our captain
had a new concern. This part of the Mississippi
was notoriously dangerous for steamboats such
as ours, ever since the New Madrid earthquake
of 1811 had devastated the region and raised the
many perilous snags along the banks. These
sunken trees, with their twisted branches and
roots, could lurk unseen just beneath the water
and impale passing ships with deadly con-
sequences. (Just such a fate had indeed befallen
our own ship’s namesake; a hidden snag had
sunk the very first New Orleans steamship in
1814.) However, the savvy captain carefully navi-
gated through the marked shallows whilst still
managing to dock at the Memphis port.
The Federals had occupied this highly strate-
gic river gateway—once among the South’s largest
cotton (and slave) markets—since defeating the
Confederates in the naval battle of ’62, so Mary
and I were able safely to disembark for a much-
desired respite on dry land. While there, I did
manage to join a small group of Union soldiers
I spotted playing poker outside near the ship.
One of them clearly took a shine to me, too—
until, that is, I had shone him up at cards and
emptied his wallet. The parting look he shot at
me might have warned me to watch out for him
downriver, especially after overhearing that the
men were part of a cavalry regiment heading
south to New Orleans themselves. But I still had
much to learn about sore losers (especially when
they were insecure men losing to women!). In the
meantime, our next visit to shore was very nearly
tragic.
The river seemed to grow ever wider as we
journeyed southward, often past large islands
midstream. At the point where we reached the
confluence of the Mississippi and Arkansas
rivers, there was a landing situated right on the
Arkansas Delta. The riverport town there was
called Napoleon, and it was there that we
stopped again.
I read long afterward how that same town
would soon suffer a disastrous fate. After the oc-
cupying Union troops dug a channel through the
narrow land separating the Mississippi and Ar-
kansas upriver to aid their gunboats, the town of
Napoleon would eventually be entirely sub-
merged by river floodwaters. Mark Twain later
wrote about it in one of my favorite books, his
Life on the Mississippi, where he described the
ghostly image of floating over the town he once
knew and loved:
Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Missis-
sippi rolling between unpeopled shores and straight
over the spot where I used to see a good big self-
complacent town twenty years ago . . . a town no
more—swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the
fishes; nothing left but a fragment of a shanty and
a crumbling brick chimney!
Yet for us that day, Napoleon was still a thriving,
bustling community, and it was also where Mary
and I both had a near-fatal fright.
The Captain informed us that our stay
would be brief—just long enough to load some
much-needed supplies and fuel for the boilers—
 
 
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 but that passengers could have the afternoon to
stroll about the town. I was walking along the
bank rather briskly, my colorful parasol in hand,
until I was ahead of Mary a piece despite her long
stride. Suddenly, I heard her shout from behind
in her deep voice, almost a scream even. She
yelled, “Stop, Miss Carlotta! Watch your step!”
I looked down to see a large water moccasin
snake on the bank right in front of me. I
screamed, but before I knew what hit me, I was
flung to the ground with one sweep of Mary’s
strong arm. I looked up just in time to see a long
shape with numerous dark bands attached to
Mary’s hand. It was the largest such pit viper I
had ever seen. It was sunning itself on the bank
when I nearly stepped on it, but Mary saw it first,
and—after pushing me aside—threw herself upon
the serpent right before it struck. The snake now
dangled from her hand as she tried to free herself
from the grasp of its sharp fangs. The cat-like pu-
pils seemed to glare at her hatefully, and I knew
she would now consider herself forever cursed
and under the “snake-eye” spell.
The snake finally let go after she pinned its
writhing body to the ground with her foot. She
then quickly grasped a sharp-edged rock near at
hand and smashed the diamond-shaped head be-
fore tossing the now limp, scaly body far out into
the river. Despite the pain in her hand, the first
thing Mary did was rush over to my side. At that
moment, I felt a new sense of deep devotion to-
ward Mary as a loyal friend. And I knew she had
probably just saved my life at the risk of her own.
“You all right, Miss Carlotta?”
“I’m fine, thank you Mary. But look at your
hand, you must see the ship’s doctor at once!”
 * * * 
For the next few days, Mary lay in her bed
below deck suffering from a high fever and hal-
lucinations. Fortunately for her, the on-board
doctor was something of an expert in treating
snake bites—particularly those of the river variety,
having seen his share as a ship’s doctor—and he
had responded to my urgent pleas by attending
to her promptly.
He said, “She’ll have to lose her little finger
to keep the venom from spreading. But if she re-
covers from the fever, she might still live.”
“Might? I don’t like the sound of that! How
long before we know, doctor?”
“She will likely be bedridden till we reach
New Orleans. But, with luck, she will make a full
recovery.”
“With luck?”
 * * * 
I remained, for the most part, with Mary in
our quarters for some time afterward, tending to
her wound and praying for her recovery—though
I did venture up to the deck occasionally to ob-
serve the sights. As we drifted further south, the
years of recent warfare were all the more evident.
There were many burnt and empty fields along
both sides of the river, where the cotton and
other crops had been abandoned to rot. There
were recent battlefields, such as Vicksburg, where
the muddy trenches appeared still stained with
blood, lined with hundreds upon hundreds of
temporary graves with small wooden crosses.
And sometimes, I could see empty plantation
houses in the distance. Some were still quite
beautiful, but others had been burned to the
ground, with occasional chimneys and Greek re-
vival pedestals and columns standing like ancient
ruins from some distant land. These images
brought back my worries about the situation in
Kentucky. At such times, I would grasp the rails
tightly and say a silent prayer for my mother and
sister, anxious for news from home.
At Natchez, many beautiful estates along the
river had survived. There, the Confederates sur-
rendered early in the war without a fight soon
after the fall of New Orleans, and many of the
old mansions were now occupied by Union
troops. (General Grant himself occupied the fa-
 
 
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 mous Rosalie Mansion as his headquarters in
## 1863.)
Soon after passing through Natchez, Mary
seemed to make a miraculous recovery and was
soon on her feet again, joining me on deck to
view the changing landscape. If her bandaged
hand troubled her, she stoically ignored it. The
only pain she showed was from within, as I could
see in her eyes when we passed numerous refugee
camps where thousands of freed slaves struggled
to survive in destitute living conditions. Pres-
ident Lincoln had first issued the Emancipation
Proclamation in ’62, and it had taken effect on
the first of January 1863. Federal troops were
now busy closing down slave markets and liber-
ating captives from the horrors of human slavery
at each city they captured; yet while the war still
raged, they were largely still confined to these sor-
did camps. Many of the freedmen eagerly joined
in the fighting against their former masters and
were organized into separate regiments of their
own. Whenever I looked at Mary now, I felt an
ever-deepening sense of guilt for having been
raised in a so-called “civilized” society that could
condone such monstrous barbarity.
As we journeyed on down into Louisiana, we
also saw occasional bands of Indians—men,
women, and children—watching us from the river
banks, their eyes filled with a depth of sadness
such as I had never seen. At night, we could
sometimes see their campfires glowing red
through the woods. The still evening air was
often punctuated with a solemn drumbeat, and
the melancholy cadence of their sacred chants
drifted across the moonlit water.
They, too, were displaced, mostly remnants
of Choctaw and Cherokee tribes forcibly re-
moved during the shameful Trail of Tears trav-
esty, perpetrated by President Andrew Jackson
and continued as hostile policy toward our native
peoples by Van Buren and subsequent pres-
idents. It was only later (after I finally reached the
Texas frontier in the midst of the Texas-Indian
wars) that I fully understood the true nature of
their struggle to keep their ancestral lands and
way of life.
 * * * 
Baton Rouge was our last major stop before
the long sternwheeler journey finally approached
its conclusion at New Orleans. The landscape
changed drastically as we ventured deeper south
into the swampy regions of Louisiana. One misty
morning, as Mary and I stood on the stern of the
Texas deck enjoying a cool breeze infused with
the sweet scent of wild honeysuckle and wisteria
blooming along the bank, a large dark shape sur-
faced in the water just below us. As I peered over
the railing for a closer look, I jumped back, star-
tled to see staring back at me a pair of sinister-
looking yellow eyes. Just then, a young man with
eyes even darker than my own stepped up beside
me and said in a thick Cajun drawl: “Don’t let
them gators get y’all!” He pointed toward the
bank, where we could see through the clearing
fog several more enormous alligators lying in the
sand.
“My heavens!” I smiled at the fellow and
lightly touched his arm. “I don’t recall ever seeing
such critters back home in Kentucky.”
He said, “You ain’t in Kentucky no more,
lady.” Then he winked at me before sauntering
off toward the gambling parlor, and Mary
glanced at me with a knowing smile. I had just
gained a gullible new customer for my card table.
 * * * 
That’s where the “sore loser” I mentioned
earlier comes in, when I learned the hard way
about the perils of playing too many of Daddy’s
old tricks at once for the sake of winning at all
costs. Our steamboat finally docked at the land-
ing in New Orleans, and we had just stepped off
the boarding ramp with our luggage when I
heard a voice behind me, this time an angry
shout.
 
 
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 “Hey, lady! Hold it right there, you cheatin’
little whore!”
I turned around to see the Union soldier
from Memphis who had frightened me with his
appearance. He was pointing at me while speak-
ing angrily to a group of soldiers.
I tried to remain calm while looking around
for a means of escape. There was none. We were
quickly surrounded by soldiers, and they were all
now staring at me with looks of hostile intent.
 * * * 
Several things now happened at once. First,
the piercing whine of our steamer’s whistle
sounded above the deck from where we had just
descended. I attempted to step backward onto
the plank and head back up in hopes of finding
safety aboard ship. But the way was shut off by a
wooden gate now that all passengers had disem-
barked. I looked frantically around for possible
help but saw naught but distant stevedores busily
unloading cargo. At that moment, the soldier
lunged forward with the most frightening look I
had ever seen.
“I finally figured out how you done it!” he
shouted as he strode toward me. “You was dealin’
dirty from the bottom of your deck. That’s how
you stole all my money. And now I aim to whip
you good for it!” He reached out to grab me, but
at that moment, Mary leapt into his way and
stood firm, towering before him like some Ama-
zonian warrior.
Mary shouted, “No you ain’t, mistah!”
She grabbed the young man with her good
hand and dragged him with her powerful arm
onto the dock. Before he even knew what had hit
him, Mary threw him out into the muddy waters
of the river, just as she had done with that snake
up in Arkansas.
I looked back with dread at the other soldiers
surrounding us, fearing their angry retribution.
But to my great relief, they were all laughing hi-
lariously. One of them shouted, “Let’s get a
drink!” At that, they all quickly departed in a
rush to the taverns of New Orleans. I sighed with
a deep breath and turned back to Mary. She was
still keeping an intent watch on the soldier as he
floundered in the river before finally stumbling
back on land sopping-wet in his blue uniform.
He took one look at us and hastened off in the
opposite direction. We never saw him again.
sts
 Editor’s note: Lottie Deno: A Novel of the Civil War
& the American Southwest is now available from
Parkhurst Brothers Publishers (2024). 
 
 
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