Students interested in the Civil War will find not only a wealth of reading material to choose from but can visit many of the battlefields, which have been preserved as historic sites. The battlefields at Petersburg, Virginia, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, are particularly interesting, but there are many others. Readers of this book might especially enjoy a visit to Appomattox Court House.
About How People Speak
in This Book
In writing a book of this kind, it is always difficult to accurately reflect the way people of an early time spoke. The truth is that people like Johnny and his family would have used a good deal of nonstandard English in their ordinary speech. Some of the other, rougher people, especially the soldiers and the teamsters we have portrayed in this book, would have used very improper English, and would have cursed regularly.
Furthermore, blacks of that time and place spoke a dialect of their own that differed in many respects from standard English. Indeed, at times it probably would be incomprehensible to us today if we heard it spoken.
In order to make this book understandable to modern readers, we have kept pretty much to standard English. However, we have scattered in some of the sort of nonstandard grammar our characters would have used; and we have added occasional touches of black dialect, just to give something of the flavor of it.
The same is true of the occasional curse words we have used. To be honest, these people would have cursed a great deal. We have occasionally employed some of the milder curse words for the sake of historical accuracy.
The Gettysburg Address
November 19, 1863
Abraham Lincoln
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JAMES LINCOLN COLLIER is the coauthor, with his brother, Christopher, of My Brother Sam Is Dead, a Newbery Honor Book; The Bloody Country; The Winter Hero; and The Arabus Trilogy: Jump Ship to Freedom, War Comes to Willy Freeman, Who Is Carrie? and The Clock.
James Lincoln Collier has written many other highly acclaimed books for young readers, including When the Stan Begin to Fall and The Teddy Bear Habit and, for adults, The Making of Jazz. He lives in New York City.
CHRISTOPHER COLLIER is a professor of history at the University of Connecticut. His field is early American history, especially the American Revolution. He is the author of Roger Sherman’s Connecticut: Yankee Politics and the American Revolution and other works. He and his family live in Orange, Connecticut.
Also Available
We hope you’ve enjoyed this ebook!
Other great ebooks from AudioGO by James and Christopher Collier include:
• My Brother Sam is Dead
• Who is Carrie?
• Jump Ship to Freedom
• War Comes to Willie Freeman
• Decision in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of 1787
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