Across Five Aprils Quotes
"It's damp fur down and warm on top. Once we git these planted and a soft rain comes, we’ll hev a crop to make people up north call us ‘Egypt’ fer sure."
"Yore hopes is makin’ a fool of yore reason, Jeth. We’re lucky if these ‘taters is bedded by noon tomorrow."
"The Lord God created the earth and all upon it, Jeth. I don’t like to hear that His work warn’t of the best."
"But don’t you see, Ma, He created the sun and moon and stars too—some a little bigger, others maybe a little purtier."
"The sight of a pretty face might bring a tired smile to her lips, but it was a thing of little value in Ellen’s world."
"Adults were usually troubled. There were chinch bugs and grasshoppers, months of drought, elections, slavery, secession, talk of war."
"Seems sometimes there’s a deep silence all about us out here waitin’ to be filled."
"May the Lord help him, may the Lord guide his hand."
"He’s like a man standin’ where two roads meet, Jeth, and one road is as dark and fearsome as the other."
"Death, however, was neither simple nor lightly brushed aside when it struck home."
"I’m going to remember this night fer a long while, Shad."
"It’s larnin’ we want in this here school, young feller."
"If it wasn’t fer yore leavin’, I’d be real proud about keepin’ yore books, Shad."
"The accounts you read in newspapers today will fill the pages of history by the time you’re a man."
"We’re gittin’ close to the place where some piz’nous snake might strike quick."
"I wouldn’t doubt but what they sense somethin’ of John about you."
"There be things that’s evil in these woods tonight."
"I reckon I kin do it, Pa. There’s nothin’ hard about it—jest keepin’ a level head and usin’ gumption."
"Drink the coffee, and hev one hour of comfort before this day is over."
"The cause of the Union had been going well in the West."
"It was a very short strip as measured by his fingers, but a shadow swept across his eyes."
"The triumphs along the Mississippi had made good news."
"I tell you frankly that the contagion of their devotion has not yet gripped me."
"He shouted, waved his cap, encouraged their cheers, and fired his men with the kind of spirit that they showed here at Antietam."
"He does not have the cold approach to killing, the singleness of purpose, the brutal tenacity, that the winner of this war—if there ever is to be one—must have."
"It’s good that you’re a boy and don’t have to pester yourself with all these troubles that men be suffering through these days."
"How do you feel when things like that come up?"
"It’s no matter—I can’t set down to a table and forget that someone sick as Eb looks to be is living off the land."
"It would have been folly to give up with victory so near—so men went to the polls that November and reelected Abraham Lincoln."
"The news of that vote was heartwarming to the tired President."
"The Army of the Cumberland was in Tennessee ready to face the same General Hood, and in command of it was 'The Rock of Chickamauga,' General George Thomas."
"Perhaps General Hood believed that the Army of the Cumberland, weakened by loss of regiments to the Army of the Tennessee, could be overcome and Tennessee regained for the Confederacy."
"It is late at night but I hev a story to tell and I must rite it becus I cant sleep til I hev told you."
"I didn’t dast to stop or take his hand but I went close and under my breth I told him Id try to come back and I think he nodded."
"I beg to present you the city of Savannah as a Christmas gift," Sherman wired the President.
"This is the nest where secesh was hatched," the army shouted.
"What is this goin’ to do to an eighteen-year-old boy, Matt? Kin a lad come through weeks of this kind of actions without becomin’ a hardened man?"
"But they’re bein’ cheered on, Matt. Congress—the whole country—is happy with ‘em; these boys air goin’ to believe that they be heroes for lootin’ and burnin’, fer laughin’ at distress, fer smashin’ the helpless without pity."
"You and Mary hev lamed him right from wrong, Ed."
"It’s bin long sence you hev told me any of the old lessons Shad used to larn you, Jeth," his mother remarked one morning.
"The sooner we make one great swoop, the sooner the sufferin’ is over fer all of us—South as well as North."
"Don’t expect peace to be a perfect pearl, Jeth," Ross Milton had warned.
"This is a land lying in destruction, physical and spiritual."
"But the hate that burns in old scars, and the thirst for revenge that has distorted men until they should be in straitjackets rather than in high office—these are the things that may make peace a sorry thing...."
"It’s a far star, Jeth; it’s a dim pinpoint of light in the darkness."
"Jeth, it’s a day I’ve dreamed about," he said, and even as he spoke, he vaguely wondered why it was that he should whisper the words.
"You are their pride, Jeth. Those two want the very best for you."