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1864 Juliana, Georgia

T he three elders of Juliana met on a late November night in the sanctuary of the white columned Baptist church on Minette Street. Brass candelabra glowed on the altar. Rain lashed at stained glass windows that depicted the baby Jesus in the manger, Joseph and Mary huddled on either side. A wooden cross loomed ominously behind them.

The three men, hoary-haired, hands trembling with age, sat in a row on the front wooden pew. Rain dripped off three hat brims and pooled on the worn wood floor. The men’s faces were grim but still fat and flush with good food and whiskey. Minette, Cleburne, and Dalzell were their names. Three of the eight original founders of Juliana, these were the men who’d taken on the weighty mantel of leadership. The ones responsible for steering the fate of the town.

Each man had seen plenty of death in his lifetime. Tuberculosis, smallpox, and scarlet fever had done their duty as cullers of the herd. Childbirth and cancer had taken plenty, too. But this new death the three men were witnessing, this terrible death brought by war, was a different animal altogether. Sons and brothers, nephews and neighbors, had been taken by an enemy with a face, an enemy who should’ve been an ally. This war-death was an affront to all the people of Juliana held dear. And, if reports were to be believed, it was now about to encroach on their beloved town.

General William T. Sherman had entered the state of Georgia.

Thirty-two years prior, in 1832, in the height of the Georgia gold rush, the small town of Juliana had been established around a gold mine along the banks of the Etowah River. The mine lay two miles out of town and was worked by a crew of simple, strong, and straightforward men. It had been quite profitable for its owner, Mr. Alfred Minette, one of the three elders of the town. Indeed, it was he who’d won the parcel of land in the gold lottery and named the hamlet after his firstborn daughter, the lovely but frail Juliana who had died many years earlier in South Carolina.

The gold mine had not only made Minette rich, but also the men who ran the shops and restaurants in town, and who sold the lumber to build the gracious houses and churches that now lined Juliana’s streets. The village had thrived, becoming a popular summer getaway for many planters down in Thomasville and Savannah when they wanted to escape the southern heat.

After his miners had joined the Confederate army and marched off to fight the Yankees, Mr. Alfred Minette had compelled their wives and children to take over the dark, dangerous work. Minette’s method of persuasion may have involved carefully worded threats of cutting off these poor folks’ credit at the mercantile or seeing they no longer had candles to burn or bacon to fry—but no one had witnessed these conversations, so who was to say? The women and children might not have been able to drill as efficiently as the men, but some work was getting done and what gold was found continued to be shipped off to the stamp mill in Allatoona.

Now the three town elders found themselves in a quandary. Rumor had it that on his path to Atlanta, General Sherman was hell-bent on crushing all Confederate industry along the way. The Yankee devil was not only burning cotton and woolen mills, he was also destroying mines—both gold and coal—and smashing equipment and transport rails.

Juliana lay directly in Sherman’s path. Once he found the gold mine, he and his men would blow it to high heaven, taking away the town’s one source of wealth. Then, they’d probably burn the town, just for spite. Surely Juliana would not be spared, Minette declared in an ominous voice to the other two men. They must hide the mine and those who worked in it.

“I prayed to my dear, sweet angel, Juliana. My daughter, who watches us from her heavenly abode,” he said. “I beseeched her to have mercy on us. To look down from heaven and show us the way.”

Then he told them his plan.

* * *

Sherman’s men stayed in Juliana for five days—long enough to confiscate all the potatoes, rice, corn, salt pork, and livestock they could find and send scouts out for the best spot to cross the river. They did not find the mine nor what was hidden inside.

It had been daring, the plan proposed by Minette. Before the Yankees had gotten to Juliana, the women and children who worked the mine had been supplied with a small amount of water, matches, candles, and blankets, then herded through the entrance and down the deepest shaft. Two members of the Bartow County Home Guard—former miners who knew their way around a stick of dynamite—blew up the entrance of the mine, effectively sealing it shut. They spread the rubble with brush and vines, hiding the entrance from view. The townspeople were told that the women and children had been sent away via train, and were ordered not to speak of the mine or risk the pain of punishment.

Sherman’s troops had not discovered the mine. They hadn’t even taken notice of the deserted shacks that lined one muddy street just outside of town. In fact, the Yankees had seemed wholly uninterested in the lovely Juliana, proof being they didn’t set fire to a single building, not even on the square. But they stayed longer than the elders expected. When they’d finally decamped and the two members of the Home Guard tunneled back into the mine, a gruesome discovery was made. All the women and children were dead, drowned together in a pool at the bottom of a cavern. The elders ordered the bodies to be left to rot at the bottom of the pool and, making the two Home Guard workers vow their silence, had them barricade the entrance to the mine once again.

Life in Juliana went on. At the close of the war, the town’s young men returned home and learned that the devil Sherman had sent their wives and children far away on train cars to Ohio and Kentucky and Illinois. Alfred Minette reassured the stunned soldiers. Gold fever had moved out West. The real resources of Juliana, he told the men, were the acres and acres of longleaf pines surrounding the town. Minette was building a lumber mill and would give them work. They could earn money and set out to find their families. Or better yet, they could accept God’s will, take new wives, and begin new families.

A few of the men left. Most stayed. The two men of the Home Guard were both drowned in the Etowah. An accident, it was said. A tragedy.

* * *

One year later, the three elders gathered again in the church. The sanctuary was quiet. The stained glass glowed in the light of the full moon. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph gazed down at the three elders as if to say, You see? All is well. All will be well . But the cross still loomed over them all.

Minette fixed the other two with a grave look. “I have seen the light. The true way.”

Cleburne and Dalzell waited.

“We hid the mine, hid the workers, and our town was saved. Not only that, but while other towns around us have withered and died, our Juliana has prospered.”

Cleburne and Dalzell nodded. The lumber mill had indeed saved the town.

“Do you see?” Minette continued. “We may not have intended their deaths, may not have wanted such a tragedy, but it happened, and now I realize what must’ve transpired. Psalm Fifty-four, verse six. ‘I will freely sacrifice unto thee. I will praise thy name, O Lord, for it is good.’”

The two men looked at him with expectant eyes.

Minette grinned broadly. “We made a sacrifice. A sacrifice to Juliana, my dear, departed daughter, and she was pleased. Like Abraham did when the Lord required him to bind Isaac and make of him a burnt offering, we left those souls inside the mine for her, and Juliana accepted our offering and in turn has blessed us.”

Cleburne and Dalzell considered this. Alfred Minette was a shrewd man. A rich man. Surely, a man who had made so much money knew best. Surely, they could trust that he knew what had brought their town health and prosperity.

“Amen,” said Cleburne.

“Amen,” said Dalzell.

“From now on,” Minette declared, his eyes lit as if from a blue flame ignited within, “whenever there is trouble in our town, whenever storm or pestilence or plague threatens, we know what we must do. We must offer a sacrifice to my dear Juliana, and she will save us.”

Cleburne and Dalzell exchanged looks.

“Gentle Juliana,” said Minette. It sounded like a pledge. A pledge and a command.

So, “Gentle Juliana,” the two echoed.

“Gentle Juliana,” all three declared in unison, their voices sober and strong, flames now lit in all their eyes.

It was decided there would be a party. A roasted pig and music and dancing and fireworks for the whole town to celebrate Juliana’s narrow escape from the devil’s torch. And a day to celebrate this new understanding, at least for these three, of who controlled Juliana’s fortunes and what she required.

But before that, the three men would take an oath. None would speak of what had been done to the miners’ families, other than to anyone named Minette, Cleburne, or Dalzell. Only the elders possessed this secret knowledge about Juliana’s watch over their town. And in the future, be it ten years or one hundred, when hard times befell their town, it would be a Minette, Cleburne, and Dalzell who would do what was necessary.