UI expert finds novel written by a Southern belle

By GREG KLINE
© 2003 THE NEWS-GAZETTE
Published Online January 6, 2003

   She was the only woman on Civil War Confederate money, a Southern belle of head-turning beauty and, behind the scenes, a skillful political operator.
   So when Vernon Burton heard that Lucy Holcombe Pickens – daughter of Texas, wife of South Carolina's powerful governor, rumored lover of a Russian czar – might have secretly penned a romantic novel published under a man's name, he was naturally interested.
   But it took the University of Illinois history and sociology Professor 15 years of off-and-on detective work before he could find a copy of the book. Now, thanks to Burton and his wife Georganne "The Free Flag of Cuba" and Lucy Pickens are getting a modern audience.
   "My guess is it's going to do better now than it did then because of the historical value that it has now," said Burton, one of whose specialties is Southern history.
   Burton first heard about "The Free Flag of Cuba" in researching his Pulitzer Prize-nominated book "In My Father's House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina."
   "There were rumors that she had written this novel," he said. "But I could never find it. "I wanted to see what she said because I'd heard so much about her."
   "To write a novel would have backed up my theory that this was a disciplined, political woman," he added.
   Especially a novel with a decidedly political message. The book is loose a fictionalization, and a defense, of the Lopez "filibuster" of Cuba. At the time, "filibustering" didn't mean long-winded senators speaking, but rather mercenary American military expeditions in Latin countries.
   Ostensibly, the goal was to free the countries to emulate the American republic. In practice, it served to line some participants' pockets and, from the perspective of the South, had potential to add slave states to the Union.
   When the Lopez expedition was quashed in 1851, many of its participants were executed by Spanish authorities, including the love of Lucy Holcombe's life, William Crittenden.
   Her book is partly autobiographical. But the Burtons said it also serves a number of other purposes.
   Its idyllic portrayal of slavery, for example, is a refutation of the picture in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the classic anti-slavery book of the time. Its stance on federal authority – President Millard Filmore denounced filibustering – presages Southern arguments for the Civil War.
   Over the years, as Burton searched, some libraries and other repositories claimed to have the lost book. But all the leads turned out to be dead ends.
   "I would go and they would say they would have a copy and it would be a part of it," said Burton, who also found a handwritten fragment at Duke University.
   The search was further complicated because the book's title was listed differently by different sources, as was the pseudonym Pickens used to write it, H.M. Hardimann.
   Finally, UI librarian Carol Penka located the full text on a roll of microfilm made to preserve obscure 19th Century novels. (As far as the Burtons can tell, only one paper original, found later at the New York Historical Society, exists.)
   Burton and his wife, who taught history and English, had been looking for a project to do together and went to work editing and annotating the novel for new publication.
   Their introduction, which covers nearly a quarter of the book, is a mini history of, among other things, the filibuster movement, the Lopez expedition, the pre-Civil War South and, of course, Lucy Pickens.
   Lucy married the rich, powerful and much older Francis Pickens (he was 53, she not quite 26) after her Crittenden's death in Cuba. Her book may have been, in part, an exercise to work through her loss.
   Pickens, a former congressman, was dispatched as minister to Russia in 1858. Lucy's daughter Eugenia was born in the Russian royal palace in 1859.
   Speculation in some quarters was that Czar Alexander played more of a role than providing the birth place. The Burtons discount that as sniping from Lucy's rivals, and the dates between the Pickens' first meeting the czar and the birth don't add up.
   As the country moved toward Civil War, Pickens, once seen as a potential presidential candidate, returned to become South Carolina's governor. He led the state's secession and demanded the surrender of federal forts in Charleston Harbor.
   Meanwhile, Lucy Pickens was the "uncrowned queen of the Confederate South," an extravagant and flirtatious hostess and a confidante to many Southern politicians, according to the Burtons.
   She appeared on the Confederate $100 bill – they were called Lucys – and sponsored a Holcombe Legion in the South's Army, perhaps paid for with jewels received from Czar Alexander.