Across Five Aprils: Chapters 3–4

Miles of bunting draped dozens of platforms, where speakers, by virtue of their prestige as men of property or of exceptional eloquence, found themselves called upon to fan the wrath of the people.

Families packed children and picnic baskets into wagons and drove to a different town each week, where the music of brass bands and the streams of inflamed oratory made a glorious succession of holidays for people long bound to the tedium of isolation.

Families packed children and picnic baskets into wagons and drove to a different town each week, where the music of brass bands and the streams of inflamed oratory made a glorious succession of holidays for people long bound to the tedium of isolation.

Tom and Eb were sullen and resentful for days that their prophecies of an easy victory should so early have taken on a hollow ring.

Word of a fiasco at a place in the East called Ball’s Bluff came while people were still stunned by the news from Bull Run.

“I hate slavery, Jeth, but I hate another slavery of people workin’ their lives away in dirty fact’ries fer a wage that kin scarce keep life in ’em; I hate secession, but at the same time I can’t see how a whole region kin be able to live if their way of life is all of a sudden upset; I hate talk of nullification, but at the same time I hate laws passed by Congress that favors one part of a country and hurts the other.”

“I hate slavery, Jeth, but I hate another slavery of people workin’ their lives away in dirty fact’ries fer a wage that kin scarce keep life in ’em; I hate secession, but at the same time I can’t see how a whole region kin be able to live if their way of life is all of a sudden upset; I hate talk of nullification, but at the same time I hate laws passed by Congress that favors one part of a country and hurts the other.”

Autumn was blithely indifferent to the tumult in the land that year.

“What’s hurt you, Bill?” he asked, his voice barely audible, for he was pretty sure he knew.

He reached for the week-old paper and read again the letter that was the great tonic and stimulant of the day...

There’s been a long chain of events leading up to this time; the dreams of men in my generation are as insignificant as that—” he snapped his fingers sharply.

The end of the war is in sight for the optimists.

Jethro and young Yale were silent, a part of the great dread that spread in all directions over the land that night, a dread that all the cheers over Fort Henry and Donelson couldn’t dispel...

He would remember the rebuke to the end of his days.

Shadrach put his hand to his throat as if some constriction had suddenly tightened it, but he answered the smile.