"Anne! Anne!"

A young girl, perhaps 14 years of age, rushed through the door, her apron untied and her simple dress spattered with red Carolina mud. Patti Mordecai raised an eyebrow and her eyes slowly traveled from disheveled hair, to untied apron, to muddy skirts and shoes as the girl shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, trying vainly to smooth back her hair and the wrinkles in her dress.

"Well, Anne," Patti said sternly, "What do you have to say for yourself?" Her eyes danced with silent laughter.

"Oh, Miss Mordecai!" Anne said with obvious distress, missing the amusement behind her mistress’s eyes, "The most horrible thing has happened!" Anne’s words tumbled over each other, in her earnest effort to explain her belatedness and appearance. "General Sherman has ordered that all the Confederate dead be removed from the city cemetery! The cook sent me to find out exactly what is going on, and I forgot about the time, and. . ."

"Calm down, child." Patti kept the smile on her face, but her eyes went hard and cold. "You are forgiven. Now come get my things, so I can find out exactly what is going on. Oh, and Anne?" The young girl turned around, a tentative smile on her face. "Get me a simple dress. The General should know that I mean business."

"General, you have a visitor."

"I’ll take him in my office. Who is it?"

"Miss Patti Mordecai."

The General groaned. Of all the people General Sherman had been forced to face during his command, the Southern Woman was the most stubborn. And of all the southern woman he had met, Patti Mordecai was the most stubborn, the most ornery, and the best at getting under his skin.

"Send her in." Sherman braced himself.

"Well, Miss Mordecai, why are you here? I know that you aren’t paying a social call on me."

"General Sherman, I'll get right to the point. It has reached my ears that you have ordered the honorable Confederate soldiers buried in the city cemetery to be removed. How can you ask us to move our men, who have lived here and died here, from their rightful resting place?"

"Miss Mordecai, I am sure that it has also reached your ears that I am using the Confederate Pettigrew Hospital for my wounded men. Obviously, some of my men didn’t make it through Bentonville, and the most logical place to put them is the city cemetery. But I can’t have men who killed each other lying next to each other for all eternity. So, the Confederate soldiers have to go."

"General Sherman! These men have lived here their entire lives, their families and friends are all here. Don’t men have the right to be buried next to their wives and families?"

"No! My men don’t have that privilege! The best I can do for them is to make sure that they don’t have to lie next to traitors to the country they died for!! The Confederates go!"

Patti Mordecai gave the General a long, appraising stare. "But Mr. Sherman," she asked with a deceptively soft, deep southern drawl, "where will we put the soldiers?"

"That, Miss Mordecai, is not one of my concerns." Sherman said firmly, standing and ushering her out of the door. "I expect the men to be out by the end of the month."

"And if we refuse to move them?" Patti asked, a strange light gleaming in her eye.

"Then I will have my soldiers remove them and dump them in the Neuse. Good day, Miss Mordecai." Sherman shut the door with a sigh of relief. With her face set into stony lines of determination, Patti Mordecai marched out of the Union headquarters and into the sea of red mud.