Jack: The Trilogy

The time was during those halcyon days in the American South. Life inched along like the pace of the river in late summer, 1860, that is, slowly, gently, and unhurried. If you were moving about Charleston's busy central market then, you might have gotten the impression that Charlestonians were innocently happy. They lived day-to-day mostly unaware that soon they would reap the terror of the cannon fire that would rip the very air they breathed and blast their fine architecture and green landscapes to pieces - forever altering the path of American life.
Jeremy Foster, Jack Stone, and Jeremiah Brooks, at the tender ages of 14-15 years as Book One begins, were about to fight the civil war in their own way, months before Fort Sumter in the nearby harbor surrendered, establishing the opening act of the War between the States. But their war was not against the northern invading armies - not yet - nor against the southern rebels.
No, they pitted themselves against a cruel schoolmaster - a former 'preacher' on a slave ship - who disliked them not so much because they were poor, somewhat illiterate and "uncivilized" in his oh-so-modest opinion. He despised them mainly because those poor, semi-literate, uncivilized "street beggars" and "guttersnipes" refused to accept his grand teachings about the "glorious plantation slavery system that made Charleston, South Carolina, the envy of the world and set it at the pinnacle of an advanced civilization." And so the conflict began.
Book One, Jack, the Rebel, is a humorous story of two best friends pitting themselves and plotting against their schoolmaster.
Book Two, Murder on the High Seas, continues the saga as Jack and Jeremy follow Master Whittemore who has rejoined the 'merchant service' but - unknown to the lads - the ship is a slaver whose secret destinations are ports at various Caribbean Sea islands. A romance between the boys and two young ladies in Jamaica develops and the girls insist on helping Jack and Jeremy with their plan to free the 'slave cargo' once they are boarded at another island.
Book Three, Friends Forever, relates the story of the boys' high seas gamble and later as soldiers in General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and the ill-fated Gettysburg campaign.