Dusty Bookshelf: Review of Undaunted Heart, by Suzy Barile

Suzy Barile, Undaunted Heart: The True Story of a Southern Belle & a Yankee General. Hillsborough: Eno Publishers, 2009. $16.95, 237 pages

Imagine if Romeo and Juliet were a true story, only with a background feud much bloodier than that between the Montagues and the Capulets. Suppose that Romeo wasn’t a raw boy, but a young victorious general, and Juliet was a serious young woman (of proper age) from the losing side. Then imagine that the story doesn’t end with the lovers’ violent deaths, but with over a decade of peacetime marriage.

General Smith Atkins, of Illinois, met Eleanore “Elly” Swain, daughter of the president of the University of North Carolina, when Union troops came to Chapel Hill in April 1865. The two married after what can only be called a whirlwind courtship, and the couple left for Atkins’ hometown of Freeport, with no Shakespearian poisonings or stabbings to interfere.

This story, and what happened afterward, are described in Undaunted Heart by Suzy Barile, great-great granddaughter of Smith and Elly Atkins. Barile has worked as a reporter, historian, and English and journalism teacher, so she was well prepared for the project of researching and writing her ancestors’ story, deriving it from family lore, letters, and diaries, and published sources like newspapers.

Smith Atkins, when the war broke out, was starting out in a career as a Republican lawyer and newspaperman, but he laid that aside to join the Union army, where he rose to general amid years of hard fighting in places like Shiloh and Chickamauga. General Atkins arrived in North Carolina as part of Judson Kilpatrick’s brigade in Sherman’s army. While the arrival of the federal troops was apparently welcomed by the formerly enslaved population, many white Chapel Hillians were bitter, recalling that many of their young townsmen had died fighting for the Confederacy.

The love-match between the Union general and the daughter of UNC’s president, David Swain, was not politically convenient to Swain as he navigated the postwar political waters. While Swain’s new family connection did not translate into Northern aid to his impoverished university, the marriage fed the ex-Confederates’ hostility against his administration. Swain, a former governor, was now attacked for being involved in a form of humiliating collaboration with the late enemy.

On the eve of the war, Atkins had said in a speech: “I am ready to cry out against human bondage in any & every form. I hate slavery.” He had proceeded to back up his words by fighting against slavery for several years. In contrast, Ella had grown up accustomed to being attended to by enslaved servants. But after moving to Illinois, Ella grew accustomed to hiring, not purchasing, servants, and this difference in background doesn’t seem to have impaired the marriage.

Indeed, so far as the affection between husband and wife were concerned, the marriage was quite fortunate. As Atkins embarked on a postwar career as lawyer, editor and postmaster in Freeport, he continued to show devotion to his wife, and she to him. Ella tried – apparently with ultimate success – to persuade her unwilling-to-be-reconstructed mother to appreciate the general. Atkins’ mother-in-law made quite a show of refusing to share meals with him, but the Swains otherwise stayed on friendly terms with their son-in-law. The Swains’ son Richard (“Bunkey”), a struggling doctor, came to Illinois where Atkins helped the young physician (and Confederate veteran) in setting up a practice. Unfortunately, Richard’s early death in a train accident made for a tragic ending to what had become a promising life.

There are many other premature deaths in this story, including many of the Atkins’ young children, and finally Ella herself, who died at age 38. So there isn’t a simplistic “happy ending” to this Romeo and Juliet story. Yet at least the protagonists aren’t killed off by the feud between their “two houses.”