Cover

C A P E   F E A R   R I S I N G

B O O K S   B Y   P H I L I P   G E R A R D

Hatteras Light (novel)

Brilliant Passage (nonfiction)

Title

Dedication

For Kate,

à jamais

Acknowledgments

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

The author is grateful to the following people for their valuable help in researching the historical figures and events portrayed in this novel:

The Cape Fear Museum staff, especially Harry Warren

Robert R. Crews, Wilmington Light Infantry Reserve Corps

Bob Ferguson, building manager, Public Services Division, city of Wilmington

Leland Smith and the staff of the Fort Fisher Museum and Historical Site

Michael Glancy

The Archives and Manuscripts staff of Joyner Library, East Carolina University

The Lower Cape Fear Historical Society archival staff, especially Diane C. Cashman and Merle Chamberlain

Aileen Leblanc of WHQR public radio

Dr. Melton McLaurin, UNC-Wilmington, Department of History

Dr. Daniel Noland, linguist, UNC-Wilmington, Department of English

The New Hanover County Courthouse Vital Records staff

The staff of the North Carolina Room at the New Hanover County Library

The staff of the William R. Perkins Library Special Collections, Duke University

The staff of William Madison Randall Library, UNC-Wilmington

The Thalian Hall staff

The staff of the United States Army Ordnance Museum, Aberdeen, Maryland

The staff of the Wilmington Railroad Museum

The staffs of the Southern Historical Collection, the North Carolina Collection, and the Photographic Services and Photographic Archives Sections at Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Robert H. Wooley, historian

Thanks to Stephen D. Kirk for his good work in preparing this manuscript for publication.

The author is grateful for a research grant from UNC-Wilmington and a fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council in support of this book.

This novel was inspired by events that actually happened. Some of the characters are based on historical persons. In taking dramatic liberties with the action, the author has tried to remain true to the spirit of the facts.

But this is fiction—only a storyteller’s history.

An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.

Edmund Burke, 1789

Prologue

P R O L O G U E

1 8 3 1

STRANGERS, THEY COME TO TOWN. Six men—black, furtive, traveling by night. They cross the Cape Fear River by rowboat from the west bank and gather in the shadows of stacked cotton bales on the wharf.

The August heat steams off the river in a clinging fog.

The six are frightened. There has been an uprising up north in Virginia—black men murdering whites in their beds. The roads are busy with armed riders—runaway patrols—galloping here and there after rumors of fugitives.