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Hallam's War

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One cannot escape the aspirations of the Civil War-themed novel, Hugh and Serena Hallam settling with their three children in Palmyra, Tennessee, Hugh devoted to a more sophisticated approach to crop cultivation and slave-owning, convinced his more humane treatment and controlled planting will prove an example for future prosperity. A handsome couple with noble ideas, Hugh turns a blind eye to the cruelties of his neighbor, Ross McQuirter. On the fateful day that McQuirter purchases an innocent young slave, Mary Ann, Hugh buys French, who intrigues him, and Adam, Mary Ann's father. Hoping to ease the slave family's grief at their separation, Hallam believes he can prevent any harm to Mary Ann from her new owner. Of course, Hugh is hopelessly naïve in his assumption, but this action is a perfect example of Hugh's dilemma as a born and bred southerner who has made his home in Tennessee: he cannot reconcile the underlying problems of slave-holding with his vision of the South in its most idealized existence.

Hugh honestly believes he can find the perfect formula for working the land while treating his slaves with dignity. It is this stubborn pride that is Hugh's undoing, the beautiful Serena complicit in her own way, too easily denying the ugly realities she witnesses in her neighbor's household, if not her own. While north and south move inexorably toward their historical clash, Hugh and Serena remain cocooned in their fantasies. The war intrudes with all its ugly accoutrements and the McQuirter's mistreatment of a helpless young slave delivers a blow that echoes between the two families and their children. Yet while Hugh and Serena are shocked and dismayed, it is the slaves who continue to suffer the random brutality of the system. Caught up in the southern cause, Hugh fights with the zeal of a true believer, truth only gradually infiltrating the couple's understanding of their passive participation in tragedy.

Hugh learns firsthand the fallacy of a noble war, the valiant efforts of the south doomed as time wears on; left behind to protect home and family, Serena faces her own challenges, an unwitting conspirator in a system that is complicated by the infiltration of northern forces and Ross McQuirter's cynical embrace of expediency. Hugh and Serena face ugly revelations along the way, horrified by their naiveté and pride, confronted with the price of denying principle for the sake of peaceful coexistence. The south's slow slide to defeat is detailed with deadly historical accuracy, adding weight to a family drama writ large. Albeit No Gone with the Wind, Hallam's War yields the particular insights of a personal battle in all its harrowing reality, barely visible against the larger landscape. Such lessons are hard fought and hard won, the cost devastating to a way of life bought on the backs of others. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

Hallam's War by Elisabeth Payne Rosen is an almost epic story of a Southern slave-owning family trying to maintain their way of life as their world crumbles around them. Hugh Hallam gave up a promising career in the military after the Mexican-American War to farm in the wilds of Tennessee with his wife Serena and their three children: Lewis, Kitty, and Sam. He farms in an innovative way trying to bring an end to the classic plantation way of working farmland until it has nothing left to give and then purchasing more land, leaving the rest behind. This type of farming left thousands of acres worthless, and required more and more slaves to work the ever increasing crops of cotton, even when it wasn't profitable. Hallam wants to change the way Southern farmers work to save their lifestyle. He has several slaves himself, but because he houses them well, allows them to work toward their freedom, and treats them with respect, he justifies the ownership. Life starts to crumble with the purchase of an educated slave named French and a laborer named Able. Hallam has trouble continuing to turn a blind eye to the intelligence he sees in French and the love Able has for his daughter Mary Ann. Hallam and Serena live an almost ideal life on their farm, Palmyra. They are deeply in love with each other; they have little debt and terrific children. But when the War begins, Hallam is called away to fight, and Serena must keep up the farm on her own, which becomes impossible when sabotage occurs. Soon the farm is left behind, and the family completely separated by a war based on something they don't know if they believe in any more. This is a beautifully written novel. As I was reaching the end, I found myself lingering over each page, because I didn't want it to end. The characters are fully realized, and the internal conflicts in each are stark and real. Hallam not only wars against the North, but also against his vision of himself as he asks the question: is a Negro a man? Serena struggles to keep the farm afloat and her family together in the midst of heart-rending pain and suffering. Lewis wants the glory that comes with being a soldier and standing up for his countrymen, but he has to be the man of the house when his father leaves. Even young Kitty faces struggles as she watches all the young men leave, including the one who has a piece of her heart. In the end, they are all forced to acknowledge that nothing will ever be the same again. Not their family, their farm, their country, or how they see themselves.

Hallam's War Review This book should have an insert saying " not just for Civil War buffs and Southerners. It was beautifully researched and written with conpelling characters who aes smart, couageous and have conflicted loyalties. I was stunned nny how much I learned from the book and how much I liked the main characters .i have every intention of reading it again when it comes out in paperback this summer. And I grewup in New York and now live in New England!

Seems like, with all the novels that have been written about the Civil War, we would have difficulty encountering a fresh voice or a new perspective. Both of these goals are achieved in Elisabeth Payne Rosen's first novel, Hallam's War. Hugh Hallam is a Mexican War veteran turned farmer. He has moved his family from civilized Charleston to rural East Tennessee and is keenly aware of the increasing anger of his neighbors as the events leading up to the Civil War unfold.

But, Hugh is not quite in synch with his neighbors. His farming practices are more advanced and his crop yields are higher. He sees his slaves as human beings and is uncomfortable with the prevailing view of fellow Southerners. He knows war is coming and worries about his wife, Serena, and their children. His restlessness is highlighted when the Hallam family hosts John Varick, a Northern journalist, sent South to write a series of articles for his newspaper.

When war breaks out, Hugh becomes a valued Confederate officer and is involved in the Battle of Shiloh. His oldest son, Lewis, also joins and Serena is left to hold things together on the farm. As the war wears on the Hallam Family endures, but at a price.

Payne's characterizations are strong and true to life. Hugh Hallam's war is one that is within as well as unrelentingly around him. Each character resonates with the reader and Payne's writing feel fresh and clean, and skillfully portrays their thoughts and feelings. This is tremendous accomplishment for an author making her debut. I look forward eagerly to future endeavors.

Elizabeth Payne Rosen hits the nail squarely on the head in Hallam's War, her first novel. Hugh Hallam is a man ahead of his time. He understands the "need" for slavery in the agricultural-dependent south, but is torn by the grim reality of what slavery truly is. Ms. Rosen doesn't sugar-coat Hallam's feelings, nor does she denigrate all southerners for the position they chose to be in concerning slavery. She also doesn't make slavery the central cause of the unavoidable conflict. True to history, she shows it as one of several contributing factors. The subject of the book that intrigued me the most was her treatment of the war itself. The reader can feel the excitement of the days preceding the battle at Shiloh, Grant's troops traveling downriver in riverboats, gunboats and every floating vessel available to save the day for the Union on the second day of that horrible battle that claimed over 12,000 lives. As a living historian (Civil War reenactor) and having read hundreds of accounts of the "real" soldiers who lived during that time, fighting and dying for what they believed was right, I feel that Ms. Rosen has captured that spirit in Hugh Hallam and in this book. I highly recommend it.

Author Elizabeth Payne Rosen's novel "Hallam's War" is a wonderful treatment of a problem unresolved by the civil war and reconstruction in 19th century America. "Hallam's War" is a view of southern cotton farming practices and the humane treatment of slaves by an attractive, intelligent couple, Hugh and Serena Hallam and their children, who are kindly plantation owners. Their nearest neighbors, the MacQuirters, serve as wicked foils for the Hallams's goodness. Using John Varick, a northern newspaper writer gathering information for a story gives author Rosen a vehicle for unpacking the background evidence of the goodness and intelligence of the Hallams .
Varick's northern family as well as his dedication to abolition convinces him of the underlying evil in slavery no matter how well concealed by the Hallam family. Then, a single afternoon with Ross MacQuirter lays bare the nature of slavery that Varick had suspected throughout his visit.
The fiction of the "Hallam's War" is further exposed with the carnal use of a slave girl (the unsold daughter of a man Hallam has bought). This becomes the emotional conflict of "Hallam's War," the open guilt of Ross MacQuirter and the shame of Hugh Hallam, as well as the leading idea for Varick's newspaper expose.
Despite the profound and complex emotions aroused in this story, it's author Rosen's highly competent prose that's so compelling. In character development she peels away the layers of human thought and feeling, digging deeper and deeper to uncover what it is that makes humans tick. The following passages from "Hallam's War" are but two randomly chosen examples of the dozens that people Ms. Rosen's novel.
"Hugh put out his cigarette and walked over to join the circle around the tea table. They'd be shocked enough if they could read my mind, he thought. "I'd hardly find you boring," he said aloud, bowing imperceptibly towards Mary Chesnut as he spoke, feeling her frank interest in him."
After Hugh's escape from a Yankee prison and returning to war: "For a moment, the old resentment flared, then it was gone. It was stupid and pointless trying to parcel out the guilt of slavery, this side or that:--himself or Varick, Ross McQuirter or those nameless ancestors North and South, who first profited by the system and passed it on to someone else."
No less capable with descriptive scenes, Ms. Rosen is able to see things with lyrical, poetic eyes, creating memories you'll take away from this enchanting read. At the same time, author Rosen's research skills are present everywhere. The following sample reveals her research skills in this passage describing Washington in 1862: "Pennsylvania Avenue at mid-morning -a mass of city mini-buses and private carriages competing for the right of way with a constant stream of military traffic-was the only paved thoroughfare in the city. Across the street, the fantastical red brick towers of the Smithsonian loomed over the row of livery stables and oyster bars that back up onto the canal; in the distance the unfinished cone of the Washington Monument rose above the Potomac flats. Washington had been a Southern town before the war and it hadn't changed; the frenetic activity of a wartime capital barely camouflaged the same old indolence and lack of sanitation."
It's not possible to write about this amazing debut novel without mentioning Elizabeth Payne Rosen's facility with language. In addition to sentences and paragraphs that draw you in, she hooks the reader on the tension between her characters' self-dilemmas and conflict which keep you on the edge of your seat wanting more, more, more. Further, her magic lies in the precision of description, e.g., not just trees, but specific trees and in full bloom with the warmth of spring rain and sun. That exactness leaves the reader with the experiences s/he has had, and in just that same way as Author Rosen has known it.
Although historical fiction is best judged by the quality of writing and its historical accuracy, sometimes a novelist appears who has added another quality, a story that affects us deeply with its presentation of moral dilemma. Rosen's "Hallam's War" has that quality, the dilemma of slavery and with this novel of more than a simple answer which must be answered. Ms. Rosen's readers are left with questions to be answered. Read this book. You will not be unchanged when you've finished.

Like Ursula Hegi's powerful Stones from the River in which neighbors gave up neighbors to the Nazi's out of fear for themselves, Hallam's war is the first book that helped me begin to understand how self interest seduced even moral masters like the hero Hugh into slavery, because there was no choice. Rosen makes real how the system trumped the individual, how one could not be a cotton farmer without slaves no matter how well intended toward one's slaves or how moral a life one tries to live. I am grateful for her insight and for a very good read. For me, the book triumphs in its details, great descriptions that felt authentic and fresh and a gift of language. I don't think I'll ever hear of "mint juleps" again without remembering how they were made when they were called juleps, nothing more.

How could "good" people own slaves? That's the question that Elisabeth Payne Rosen asked as she began her talk at our local bookstore in Marin County, California. (We bought our copy at Book Passage!) And her protagonists in "Hallam's War," Hugh Hallam, and his wife, Serena, certainly would be considered "good." Yet they owned slaves. How could they?

To answer this question, Rosen places Hugh and Serena in the cauldron that was West Tennessee just before and during the Civil War. She brings you into the intimate lives of both "good" and "bad" characters and beautifully illuminates the choices they made (or were forced to make) across a society in moral upheaval.

We see Hugh Hallam struggle against the raw physical frontier, as he promotes new farming methods to preserve the land. We see Hugh try to lessen the brutality of slavery by trying to enable slave families to remain intact. All of this set against the daily rhythms of cotton growing in the hot, humid summers of the South. Yet ultimately Hugh must make a decision. Should he fight for the way of life that he loves?

Rosen's novel struck a loud chord with me because just two months before reading "Hallam's War," I spent a day in the Russellville (Arkansas) Public Library researching my own family, some of whom left in 1852 for California and some of whom stayed through the Civil War. And in 1876 en route to Philadelphia to celebrate the Centennial, the California relatives visited with their Arkansas relatives. So the two branches must have had some interesting conversations!

A story about one of my relatives in a local history really jumped out at me: "Soon, because of the war activities, it became impossible to till the land and keep the slaves, so the slaves were set free and eventually all families ordered to sign pledges under oath that they would not feed or assist the Southern soldiers in any way. Some signed, but Adalissa refused -- so she and her children, along with others who refused to sign, were sent to Texas."

Now, one hundred and fifty years later, I find my California family tangentially related to the Confederacy. Who knew? But I love our whole family. So I e-mailed this story to Rosen (full disclosure: she's a friend). And she replied, "Yes, many women/families had experiences similar to Adalissa's. I even have it in my book, when Serena reviews her increasingly narrow options:"

"She prayed for a sign from Hugh, some word that would absolve her in advance for what she meant to do. She would not--could not--take the oath. But if the planters in Fannin County were forced to do so and she refused, they would be sent outside the Union lines with only what they could carry with them." (p. 346)

Yes, Serena is a "good" person. But even she could not sign a loyalty oath. Thus, "Hallam's War" beautifully illustrates the moral complexities of race and society that reverberate down through history to the present day.

Elizabeth Payne Rosen's first novel, Hallam's War treats the period leading to the Civil War as it affects the family of Hugh and Serena Hallam and their slaves on Palmyra, their farm in West Tennessee.

As a Southerner (Louisiana born and raised), Rosen captures the pace of life, exemplified by her unhurried telling of the story, the quality of Southern nights, and the slave dialect.

I started reading Hallam's War knowing very little of slavery apart from UncleTom's Cabin and The Known World and the little I learned about the cotton economy of the Civil War. All I knew was that slavery was bad, but through the sense of the characters' place in society and their diverse viewpoints, I came to appreciate the moral dilemma of how one man could own another and yet be righteous, which ultimately culminates in Hugh Hallam's plain-spoken yet profound insight:

"You had to deal with what was put in front of your
face -- you couldn't just keep going back until you found somebody you could blame it [slavery] on. You had to put a mark, here, under your feet the day you were born, or the day you accepted responsibility for who you were, and another one, there, the day you died. That was all you could hold yourself accountable for."

Timeless and universal, the human condition of his realization resonates in our lives today: Slavery, still very much with us all over the world, genocide, racism, violence, intolerance, and, of course, war. Where do we mark our own accountability "here" and "there?"

At the end of the novel, when Markie, the slave who raised Serena, opens her arms to her on her return, home -- "Chile, chile..." -- it is the catalyst that releases not only her grief, but also the reader's compassion for her and all those bereft by wars throughout time.

It is not so much the novel's historical accuracy and attention to detail that distinguishes it, but its moral and emotional power that crosses the centuries to nip at our heels.

Southerner Hugh Hallam, over a period of a few years just before the Civil War, makes several life-altering decisions: to leave the sophistication of the city to become a rural cotton plantation owner with slaves, to attempt to grow and harvest cotton in new ways that might save the cotton- and slave-based Southern culture from gradual demise, to treat his slaves humanely and gradually free them as his new farming methods take hold, to join the Confederate Army when war breaks out. "Hallam's War" skillfully and articulately weaves those decisions and their consequences, and his striking wife Serena's unwavering support of them and her husband, into a gripping story that moves forward in the shadow of the impending collision of the ideologies and cultures of the North and the South, all while subtly exploring the question "How could a good man own slaves"? Full of precise, elegant descriptions of Southern life and values on the farm and in the city, no-holds-barred accounts of the attitudes and behavior of different owners toward their slaves, and brutally vivid depictions of the violence of the Civil War, "Hallam's War" also has other thought-provoking relevance in today's world of overt and covert racism, unthinking permanent depletion of natural resources, foolishly polarized partisanship, individual greed triumphing over the greater good. A hard book to put down, very enjoyable and rewarding.