American Dreams Trilogy Read online

  Michael Phillips

  American Dreams Trilogy

  Dream of Freedom

  Dream of Life

  Dream of Love

  New York, 2018

  Contents

  Dream of Freedom

  Dream of Life

  Dream of Love

  Dream of Freedom

  Michael Phillips

  Copyright

  Dream of Freedom

  Copyright © 2005 by Michael Phillips

  Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2012 by Bondfire Books, LLC.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  See full line of eBook originals at www.bondfirebooks.com.

  Author is represented by Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard St., Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.

  Electronic edition published 2012 by Bondfire Books LLC, Colorado.

  ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795326370

  Dedication

  To my dear friends Hans and Christa Peters, Marlies Borrmeister, and Anke Peters Clemens, with whom barriers of language have prevented the saying of much that draws individuals together in this world, but between whose hearts and mine pulses the greater language of sincere affection. That often-silent tongue of a common humanity and a shared Fatherhood has bound us together for more than 35 years (or, in Anke’s case, for a little over half that!). To call them my friends is one of the priceless possessions for which I feel most greatly blessed in this life. Both I and my family have through the years been as kindly welcomed with every courtesy and consideration back to that stately brick farmhouse in Graulingen, Suderburg in northern Germany as we have been into all of their hearts. It was there that Christa, Marlies, and I first began the adventure of a cross-cultural friendship more than three decades ago. To this place of my spiritual foundations I have often returned—for a day or two, a week or two, a month or two—a place far from home where God saw fit to stir the passions of a young man many years ago toward the wonder of a life of obedience to him, and to the vision of communicating that life through the written word. It is there, in a remarkable and peaceful three weeks, that the first draft of this book was substantially written, and to Hans, Christa, and Anke it is humbly and warmly dedicated.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Prologue: From the Old Books—Africa

  Out of the Unknown Past

  Dispersion

  Freedom Stirs

  Deliverer

  Three Lives… Three Fates… Three Futures

  Part I: Seeds of Freedom

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Part II: Roots of Strife

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Part III: All Aboard

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Part IV: River Jordan

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Families in Dreams of Freedom

  Endnotes

  Introduction

  Some of you embarking with me on this series will be new readers; others will be old friends. I hope both will find it exciting, as I do, to launch into a new historical adventure together.

  The era in which American Dreams is set is a familiar one—the U.S. Civil War. It is a period in our collective past that fascinates us from many perspectives. It is an era of ideas and change and growth, when new trends clashed with old ideals.

  It is also an era in which the entire history of our nation comes into focus in a unique way. This history can be seen in the context of the intermingling of three primary ethnic roots—the first Native American settlers who called this continent home long before the rest of civilization even knew it existed, the black African tribesmen and tribeswomen who were transplanted as laborers into a strange new world from their own continent, and the white European races who subdued the other two at first and later had to find a way to include them in an ongoing history that is still being written.

  As these three streams of humanity both converged and clashed through the years of the nineteenth century, the globe’s newest nation had to discover what the freedom upon which it was founded really meant… for all its people.

  Into the familiar backdrop of the Civil War, I have chosen to set a story that explores the roots of human unity by asking the fundamental questions: What does freedom mean? How can three ethnic cultures learn to live together and forge a united nation as one new people—a people called Americans, a people with diverse dreams and yet who share a single dream: Freedom?

  To answer such questions nationally, an even more fundamental perspective must also be considered: What do slavery, redemption, and freedom mean individually? In a sense, the slavery that once existed in this land is a picture of the bondage that enslaves us all, a slavery from which our “Master” sets us free. Such is the universal story of life, the story I try to retell in all my books. At root it is a story about a Father-Master who frees us from the essential human slavery, which is independence of will… slavery to sin and self.

  There are those who think the characters of my books are “too good” and their themes too spiritual to offer the “realism” today’s market demands. But the characters you are about to meet are types and pictures of that great redeeming Christ-work that has brought freedom to us… and to the world. Is it too good to envision a wonderful and perfect Father? I hope not. For if the Lord’s redemptive work cannot take root in real people and lead to real goodness of character, we are just playing at Christianity.

  The release from the bondage that long ago enslaved the children of Israel in Egypt, and not so very long ago the African blacks of our own land, is an image of the freedom God desires to bring to all men. All redemptions must begin small, one heart at a time, until the whole world sees that freedom must be the wave of the future, that bondage to self cannot endure. The light of freedom, and the overpowering Love of the universe must, and will, overcome it in the end.

  Every book takes on a life of its own. The story that comes to life often dictates the format and structure a book will take. In order to avoid confusion as you begin, therefore, I should tell you that the “Prologue” to each book (entitled “From the Old Books”) encompasses all the volumes that follow. Their clues and threads and mysteries will resolve themselves over the course of the entire series—alt
hough I’m sure you will unravel many of them before then!—not in just one particular segment of the story. The Prologue will establish the historical context out of which emerged these three great streams of humanity, and will lay the groundwork for the series by providing a sense of the bigger picture of our nation’s foundations.

  In closing, I will add these thoughts from the Introduction to Wild Grows the Heather in Devon, emphasizing that:

  Perhaps even more than any other series of mine which you may have read, [this] truly is a series. Hopefully each of its titles will give you a sense of completion and satisfaction. Yet at the same time it will be clear that “the whole story” has not yet been told. The first several books all combine to form a unity which none of the individual titles can achieve on their own. I beg the patience of my readers as the series develops, in the knowledge that the various entrées of a “full-course literary meal” take longer to prepare than they do to consume.

  I hope you enjoy our journey together, and our look back at a pivotal time of danger, change, and growth in our nation’s history, an era when freedom was a dream that became a reality.

  Michael Phillips

  Eureka, California

  From the Old Books

  —Africa—

  (1619–1835)

  Out of the Unknown Past

  1619

  On the shores of the Dark Continent a Portuguese merchantman—sailing under the name Vidonia—sat in the harbor of a natural bay along a little-known coastline between the mouths of the two rivers of western Sudan. Originally attracted to this region for its gold, a new cargo had, in recent decades, come to dominate the attention of its crew. Onshore the Vidonia’s captain matched wits and purse with an Arab trader who had arrived overland from the region of the Nile for the same reason as he, to bargain for slaves.

  The two traffickers in humanity met in the hut of a local Songhai king, who sat listening to their bids with growing satisfaction. Between the Arab and the European, his supply of rum and other small treasures would last all year. The recent foray to round up and kidnap men, women, and children from tribes less powerful than his own had proved as highly profitable as last year’s. He only regretted that he did not have more of his countrymen to sell to the traders.

  He motioned an attendant to pour more rum, then returned his attention to the haggling promises of the two foreigners. He did not understand their every word. But he understood more than they thought he did of their occasional asides to one another, and enough to secure for himself a lucrative commission for this transaction in human flesh.

  The wooden barracoons behind the hut where the negotiations were in progress held more than a hundred captives who had been abducted from their inland villages over the past three months. They came from a half-dozen tribes, related by blackness of skin but little else. Some were allies, some were bitterest of enemies. But now they were united in common fate.

  Among them stood a chieftain of the Ibo tribe, whose Niger river would one day give its name to a portion of the continent he had ruled. Beside him, waiting tall and stoic as he, stood his seven children—three sons and four daughters, ranging in age from twenty-four-year-old son to nine-year-old daughter. Their mother had been killed in the raid that had resulted in their abduction. They would all weep for her in time, each in his own way. For now, however, the shock of capture and fear of what awaited them kept silent rule over their tongues and their hearts.

  Stories of the sea raiders had circulated for years among the peoples of the regions of Ghana, Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Gambia. Few who were captured were ever seen again. The tales that returned to their ears contained more hearsay than fact, yet certain threads of truth could be found among them. The islands of the Caribbean where the Portuguese took their cargo had a fearful reputation. But the Arab markets of Zanzibar had worse. If the chieftain’s Ibo daughters—taller than many of their cousins of the Negro race and thus attracting the attention of lusting Arab eyes—survived the grueling overland march to Egypt and then Arabia, their only reward would be a place in some eastern harem. Meanwhile, if the chief’s sons, also taller and more muscular than their new masters, were bought by the Arab, some would be conscripted to occupy the front lines in the never-ending wars of the Middle East, while others would be taught to capture and plunder their own people to make of them slaves like themselves. In either case, their life expectancy would not be long.

  But even the images conjured up in Chief Tungal’s imagination were not so inhumane as what would eventually come to the progeny of these Nigerian people and their racial kinsmen from up and down the west of Africa. Centuries from now, the whole world would be outraged by their story. None from their race had yet settled on the continent of that New World which two centuries later would become known for its own unique and cruel form of human bondage. Theirs was a story yet in its infancy, and much suffering would be endured before they were delivered from it.

  Over the crude spiked fence Chief Tungal saw the turbaned Arab and the pale-skinned Portuguese captain emerge from the hut, accompanied by the Songhai chief.

  The proud captive turned to his seven children. In a voice low and solemn, in an ancient tongue now long forgotten, he spoke to them:

  “My sons, my daughters,” he said, “we may not see each other again. Plant my words deep in your memory. Look… read the sign of the lines of the hand… and remember!”

  He held up his left hand, palm outward to face them.

  “As the five ancient rivers run through our land,” he continued, his voice taking on the dignity of the ages, “so does the blood of ancient kings flow through our veins and give power to our limbs. Take strength from the memory of that knowledge. Do not forget the five rivers. Do not forget the land. Wherever you are taken, remember your home. Look to your own hand… remember the rivers… remember your land… remember the old tales. You come from kings and will give birth to kings. None can take that from you. Tell it to your children and their children. Tell them of the rivers and of the land… tell all the children after them, that the knowledge remain green.”

  As he spoke, tears began to trickle from the eyes of his youngest daughter. He stooped down, smiled tenderly, and wiped her soft black cheek with the back of his hand.

  A shout behind him broke the tender silence. The two traders approached the barracks to inspect their purchases. Chief Tungal stood, then turned to face them. He cast a proud glance at the pale, bearded captain, then let his eyes wander toward the swarthy, clean-shaven Arab. His fate and the fate of his children lay in the hands of these men. He had met cruelty often enough to know it in any color or race. These men also knew cruelty—he could see it in their eyes. But they were those who inflicted rather than endured it.

  The gates swung open. Chief, captain, and Arab walked into the midst of the black crowd. Before Tungal could speak to his children again, they were all swept into a confusing melee as Portuguese captain and Arab merchant inspected, probed, scrutinized, and divided their human plunder between them.

  Helplessly the father watched as one son and daughter were herded off with the prisoners of the Arab.

  Desperately the terrified son looked back. Tungal stood tall and caught his eye. With anguished heart he raised his hand one final time in the royal blessing. A cruel grip on his shoulder the next instant yanked him away, and his son disappeared from his sight.

  With much jostling and bumping, and accompanied by the barking of angry commands, he and those who remained were herded out of the compound in the opposite direction, frightened and trembling, toward the harbor. They paused briefly while each was bound to the hand of another in front and back, then were marched across the gangplank in single file, and finally shoved into the foul depths of the ship’s hold, where they were bound more securely.

  Many weeks would pass before the sunlight would shine again on their faces… if they survived the voyage at all.

  Slavery was nothing new in the world. It had existed since Old T
estament times. The civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome were all built on the backs of slave labor. In all lands and in all cultures, slavery was the price of defeat in battle. Among the blacks of Africa, too, slavery had long been a way of life for warring tribesmen defeated by their enemies. But the modern African slave trade, where men made commerce of captive human flesh, had begun with the export of Negroes out of Africa to the Muslim world.

  This trade advanced northward into Europe in the year 1440. In that year, sailing under the flag of Prince Henry the Navigator, Portuguese sea captain Antam Goncalvez captured three Moors along the west coast of Africa. These Moors exchanged their own freedom for ten African Negroes. Goncalvez took the ten blacks to Lisbon and there sold them for a handsome profit. Initially drawn to Africa for its gold and ivory, Goncalvez now realized there was an easier path to wealth. He returned south, raided several coastal African villages, and sailed back to Lisbon, this time with even more slaves in the hold of his ship.

  The European slave trade had begun.

  Over the next twenty years nearly a thousand Negroes a year were taken to Portugal and sold. By the end of the century, Portugal was supplying slaves to Spain.

  With Columbus’ discovery of the New World in 1492, a vast new marketplace for the infant slave trade opened to European conquerors. As settlements formed on the islands of the Caribbean, slaves were imported to work in their fields, plantations, and mines. The sea voyage over the Atlantic from Africa to the Caribbean West Indies, called the Middle Passage, was so inhumane and brutal that up to half the captive slaves to set sail from their homeland did not survive it. By the mid-1500s, the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch were all involved in the vigorous and profitable trade.

  As the sixteenth century advanced, the newly established European plantations of the West Indies and Spanish colonies in South America supplied steadily increasing quantities of sugarcane, tobacco, and indigo to Europe. These island colonies of the New World paid a premium for strong field hands. The Portuguese, and later the Dutch and English, competed vigorously to supply the growing need for humanity. More and more ships arrived every year along the Guinea Coast, plundering its villages for humanity. As the trade continued to expand, they took advantage of tribal rivalries to purchase captives from victorious local chiefs and kings.