Abraham Lincoln Quotes in Across Five Aprils
“Fer one thing I was wonderin’ why Abe Lincoln can’t make up his mind about war. I wonder—is he like Pa? Is he so against heven’ blood on people’s hands that he’s afeared to start a war?”
Ellen stopped her work and stood a moment without speaking, her rough brown hands resting on the handle of the hoe.
“He’s like a man standin’ where two roads meet, Jeth,” she said finally, “and one road is as dark and fearsome as the other; there ain’t a choice between the two, and yet a choice has to be made.” She shook her head. “May the Lord help him,” she whispered. “May the Lord guide his hand.”
His eyes were wide and troubled with his thoughts. He had a high respect for education, for authority of men in high places, and yet the stories in the newspapers made him wonder. McClellan, the most promising young officer in his class at West Point, was now the general who either didn’t move at all or moved ineffectually; Halleck, the author of a book on military science, was now the author of boasts that somehow branded him as a little man, even to a country boy who was hungry for a hero. There were stories of generals jealously eyeing one another, caring more for personal prestige than for defeating the Confederates; there were Pope and Sheridan, who blustered; there was Grant and the persistent stories of his heavy drinking. Nowhere in the North was there a general who looked and acted the part as did the Confederates’ Lee and Jackson.
The authority of the law loomed big in his mind; he remembered, “You and your family will be in serious trouble.” Loyalty to his brother Tom and the many thousands who had fought to the last ditch at Pittsburgh Landing, at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and all the other places that were adding length to the long list—how could loyalty to these men be true if one were going to harbor and give comfort to a man who simply said, “I quit.”
But on the other hand, how did one feel at night if he awoke and remembered, “I’m the one that sent my cousin to his death.” Eb was not a hero, certainly—not now, anyway. People scorned the likes of Eb; sure, so did Jethro, and yet—
“How do I know what I’d be like if I was sick and scared and hopeless; how does […] any man know that ain’t been there?”
“Looks like purty important mail you’re gettin’, Jethro,” Ed said quietly. His eyes were full of puzzled concern.
Jethro’s head sawm. This was the showdown; now, all the family, Ed Turner, and soon the whole neighborhood would know everything. In the few seconds that passed before he opened the envelope, he wished with all his heart that he had not meddled in the affairs of a country at war, that he had let Eb work out his own problems, that he, Jethro, were still a sheltered young boy who did the tasks his father set for him and shunned the idea that he dare think for himself. He looked at the faces around him, and they spun in a strange mist of color—black eyes and blue eyes, gray hair and gold and black, pink cheeks and pale ones and weather-beaten brown ones.
That winter many people were talking of peace […]. A people pushed to the extremities that existed in the South could not possibly hold on […]. But they did hold on, and as the war trailed drearily on, vindictiveness toward the stubborn stand of the seceding states grew steadily more bitter in the North. This vindictiveness was urged on by men in high places who resented the President’s spirit of clemency as violently as they resented the tenacity of the South.
In December Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation of amnesty, in which he promised pardon and full rights to any individual Confederate who would swear to protect the Constitution and the Union of the states, to abide by the government’s pronouncements against slavery. He promised, too, that a Confederate state could return to the Union whenever ten percent of its voters should reestablish a loyal Union government within that state.
Daily the color of April grew brighter. The apple and peach orchards were in bloom again, and the redbud was almost ready to burst. The little leaves on the silver poplars quivered in green and silver lights with every passing breeze, and Jenny’s favorite lilacs bloomed in great thick clusters, deep purple and as fragrant as any beautiful thing on earth.
Then suddenly, because there were no longer any eyes to perceive it, the color was gone, and the fifth April had become, like her four older sisters, a time of grief and desolation.
[…] Jethro would remember a sunlit field and a sense of serenity and happiness such as he had not known since early childhood. He would remember […] Nancy running toward him […] He thought at first that something had happened to his father, or [John…]
Then Nancy said, “Jeth, it’s the President—they’ve killed the President.”
Abraham Lincoln Quotes in Across Five Aprils
“Fer one thing I was wonderin’ why Abe Lincoln can’t make up his mind about war. I wonder—is he like Pa? Is he so against heven’ blood on people’s hands that he’s afeared to start a war?”
Ellen stopped her work and stood a moment without speaking, her rough brown hands resting on the handle of the hoe.
“He’s like a man standin’ where two roads meet, Jeth,” she said finally, “and one road is as dark and fearsome as the other; there ain’t a choice between the two, and yet a choice has to be made.” She shook her head. “May the Lord help him,” she whispered. “May the Lord guide his hand.”
His eyes were wide and troubled with his thoughts. He had a high respect for education, for authority of men in high places, and yet the stories in the newspapers made him wonder. McClellan, the most promising young officer in his class at West Point, was now the general who either didn’t move at all or moved ineffectually; Halleck, the author of a book on military science, was now the author of boasts that somehow branded him as a little man, even to a country boy who was hungry for a hero. There were stories of generals jealously eyeing one another, caring more for personal prestige than for defeating the Confederates; there were Pope and Sheridan, who blustered; there was Grant and the persistent stories of his heavy drinking. Nowhere in the North was there a general who looked and acted the part as did the Confederates’ Lee and Jackson.
The authority of the law loomed big in his mind; he remembered, “You and your family will be in serious trouble.” Loyalty to his brother Tom and the many thousands who had fought to the last ditch at Pittsburgh Landing, at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and all the other places that were adding length to the long list—how could loyalty to these men be true if one were going to harbor and give comfort to a man who simply said, “I quit.”
But on the other hand, how did one feel at night if he awoke and remembered, “I’m the one that sent my cousin to his death.” Eb was not a hero, certainly—not now, anyway. People scorned the likes of Eb; sure, so did Jethro, and yet—
“How do I know what I’d be like if I was sick and scared and hopeless; how does […] any man know that ain’t been there?”
“Looks like purty important mail you’re gettin’, Jethro,” Ed said quietly. His eyes were full of puzzled concern.
Jethro’s head sawm. This was the showdown; now, all the family, Ed Turner, and soon the whole neighborhood would know everything. In the few seconds that passed before he opened the envelope, he wished with all his heart that he had not meddled in the affairs of a country at war, that he had let Eb work out his own problems, that he, Jethro, were still a sheltered young boy who did the tasks his father set for him and shunned the idea that he dare think for himself. He looked at the faces around him, and they spun in a strange mist of color—black eyes and blue eyes, gray hair and gold and black, pink cheeks and pale ones and weather-beaten brown ones.
That winter many people were talking of peace […]. A people pushed to the extremities that existed in the South could not possibly hold on […]. But they did hold on, and as the war trailed drearily on, vindictiveness toward the stubborn stand of the seceding states grew steadily more bitter in the North. This vindictiveness was urged on by men in high places who resented the President’s spirit of clemency as violently as they resented the tenacity of the South.
In December Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation of amnesty, in which he promised pardon and full rights to any individual Confederate who would swear to protect the Constitution and the Union of the states, to abide by the government’s pronouncements against slavery. He promised, too, that a Confederate state could return to the Union whenever ten percent of its voters should reestablish a loyal Union government within that state.
Daily the color of April grew brighter. The apple and peach orchards were in bloom again, and the redbud was almost ready to burst. The little leaves on the silver poplars quivered in green and silver lights with every passing breeze, and Jenny’s favorite lilacs bloomed in great thick clusters, deep purple and as fragrant as any beautiful thing on earth.
Then suddenly, because there were no longer any eyes to perceive it, the color was gone, and the fifth April had become, like her four older sisters, a time of grief and desolation.
[…] Jethro would remember a sunlit field and a sense of serenity and happiness such as he had not known since early childhood. He would remember […] Nancy running toward him […] He thought at first that something had happened to his father, or [John…]
Then Nancy said, “Jeth, it’s the President—they’ve killed the President.”