The Shattered West: The Tale of Colt Marsh - Chapter Six

Chapter Six: Gabriella Ayomi

Estado Nevada, May 7, 1869 - afternoon

Gabriella Ayomi had had a very different life than Colt but was just as unique in many ways as his had been. The great-granddaughter of freed slaves, she had no personal or even second hand stories of what that awful life had been like. While Emancipation came with the Declaration of Independence, the freed African-Americans (as they liked to be called) were still treated like second class citizens.

It took generations of fighting for their civil rights to gain actual freedom - especially to vote. While they’d been granted their freedom in 1776 and men at that time could vote, many were prevented from voting by obscure voting taxes, literacy tests, or outright violence. When Congress granted women the right to vote in 1848, just ahead of the November election, it spurred voting rights legislation to be passed wholescale and states and municipalities alike saw sweeping voter turnout.

Having been born in 1845, Gabriella only grew up in a world empowered and while grateful to her parents and other forebears for all they had done, the lineage of slavery was something she couldn’t shake - it was in her name. Her given name had been Gabriella McGinnis, with McGinnis being the surname of her great-grandfather's master - which when she said the word had caused her to shudder. So when she struck out on her own, entering college at age 14, being a very gifted student and accepted to Harvard on a full, academic scholarship, she chose a new surname. Ayomi, in Yoruba, meant “Straight Forward”. The only part of her family history that she knew is that most of her great-grandparents had come over as slaves in the late 1700s and been part of the Yoruba people. Finding a Yoruba dictionary had been impossible but she’d managed to find enough people who spoke it and having seen the name Ayomi on a ship which was taking some Africans back to west Africa she found out that it meant “Straight Forward”. That was her motto anyway - always pressing forward no matter what.

The pair kept talking into the night, even to the annoyance of some passengers nearby trying to sleep. This leg of the trip was meant to be a quick overnight - only stopping at a checkpoint as they entered Deseret, the “nation” the Mormons had made when they seceded as well.

While Colt found this incredibly interesting, the fact that she had lived amidst so many of the events of which he’d only read snippets about in newspapers or heard from sailors while in China intrigued him just as much. One of the key events in the history of these dis-united States, as many had come to call them, were the events at the New Year’s Eve gala held at the White House, in 1853…

“So you were there when it happened?!” Colt exclaimed to Gabriella.

“Saw it with my own eyes and it's still hard to believe sometimes,” she replied.

“You would’ve been, what… eight years old at the time? Why were you there?” Colt asked.

“I’d written a letter to President Scott with drawings for a new motor I was working on. My teacher at school said the idea of a fuel injector was ludicrous. He said, ‘If you think the idea is so great, send it to the President and see what he thinks!’ and that’s what I did. President Scott was so impressed, he’d followed up to find out if I really was just some eight year old from Boston. The idea seemed impossible to his chief engineers but the mere idea was enough to get them thinking in directions they’d never even considered. So, in recognition, I was invited to the New Years Eve gala,” she explained.

Gabriella explained that the newspapers had it mostly right - that on New Years Eve, December the 31st, 1853 Vice President, William A. Graham, and Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, attempted to kill President Winfield Scott. Had it not been for the heroic actions of then Secretary of State, William Seward, and his close friend and current President, Thurlow Weed, they would have succeeded. The pair - Scott and Graham - had been an odd pair to begin with but brought together in hopes of ousting President Lewis Cass in 1852 after the elections fraud brought about by Tammany Hall in 1848 had swung the election in Cass’ favor. The fact that Cass had had no knowledge of this hadn’t mattered. He’d been beaten and disgraced.

The first year of his presidency had been tough. Scott and his VP were always at odds and doing things behind the other’s back. Scott ignored the yellow fever outbreak in New Orleans in May 1853. In retaliation, Davis and Graham okayed Commodore Perry to go to Japan and begin ‘Cannon Diplomacy’. In response, President Scott refused to get involved in the Taiping Rebellion. This made other foreign powers angry too. Then when William Walker invaded Baja California in November of 1853, Scott had had enough. He couldn’t prove Graham or Davis were involved or that they even had aided, which was the rumor, but he put his foot down in a big way… he vetoed the Gadsden Purchase in December. This was the last straw for many in the South saying it was an attack on the Southern economy to not offer a transcontinental path for southern goods.

While Southerners called the veto traitorous and were calling for Scott’s impeachment, Graham and Davis - along with a mysterious web of conspirators - took it one, very large step farther. Northerners decried it as a plot all along by the cabal known as the Knights of the Golden Circle - an extremist group that wanted to return slavery to all parts of the Americas.

Newspapers like the Tribune advocated for isolationism. Others, like the Liberator, offered more extremist opinions against all forms of colonialism. And the people of the “Union,” as citizens of the northern states came to be known, retreated into their own lives and only strived for any cause that would reunite the nation. As other regions seceded as well, this only amplified the idea that Unionism was everything and at any cost.

“So what brings you out West?” Colt asked, realizing they’d talked through the night as he spied the sun rising.

Gabriella looked around to see who might be in earshot and leaned into Colt and whispered, “Doing a survey for the President on the lands in Northern California.”

“Looks like you did make quite the impression with that design of yours,” Colt said with a smile.

“Scott’s engineers and chief scientists went to work right away copying my design and using it to build bigger and better engines. He saw my education was escalated. I went straight to secondary school the following week and Harvard a few years later. As soon as I graduated, top of my class of course, I went to work for him.”

“If you were out doing some surveying, shouldn’t you have a team with you?”

At that, Gabriella sat back in her seat. It took a moment for her to gather her thoughts and Colt could tell the words were hard to come. “There were complications during our survey. I was the only one to make it out alive.”

“That sounds like a sad tale, but if you need someone to tell it to, I’m still all ears,” Colt offered.

“Thanks, maybe… just need a bit more privacy than a train car offers,” she replied.

“Well, maybe in Salt Lake th-,” Colt started to say when the train suddenly lurched forward. Everyone was shaken, a few belongings scattered, but otherwise people seemed okay. A few moments later, the conductor came through the car. “See, they’re coming through to check...I bet everything is fine.”

“Please remain calm folks,” the conductor said, making his way down the aisle. “Everything is fine.” But before anyone could ask the man a question or be offered any assistance from him, he was through the car and out the back. Colt looked out his window and saw the man jumping from the train and high tailing it into the bush.

“That can’t be good,” Colt said standing.

“Where are you headed?” Gabriella asked.

“To help…”