At first, neither side believed the other was truly serious about the war. Most people thought the fighting would be over quickly. Full of excitement and patriotism, young men on both sides rushed to join militias, or local military groups. With parades and celebrations, communities outfitted their militias and grandly sent them off to “whip the enemy.” Sisters and girlfriends urged hesitant brothers and sweethearts to volunteer, just as Emma did with Jacob.
Like Jacob, many who volunteered were mere boys. Confederate Charles Carter Hay enlisted in 1861 at age 11; when he surrendered in 1865, he was one month shy of his 15th birthday. A young private from Texas was 13 when he lost a leg in battle. Drummer boys and musicians were sometimes as young as 9 or 10.
But the war did not end quickly. Months dragged on into years, and the war turned bloody. Fewer and fewer men volunteered to fight. Both sides began to draft soldiers. Husbands and fathers, like Cassie’s pa, were forced to go to war, leaving their families to fend for themselves.
Because almost all the fighting took place in the South, the war took an especially terrible toll on women and children there. Fields and backyards became battlefields. Houses and farms were destroyed. To supply their troops, Federal armies foraged the countryside, taking food and supplies from local families without paying for it. Soldiers sometimes looted homes for valuables, then burned anything they didn’t take. Destroying towns, cities, and farmland became a policy of some Northern generals late in the war. Philip Sheridan’s troops devastated Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and William Tecumseh Sherman set out to “make Georgia howl.” As marching armies drew near, frightened families fled. Many were left homeless and destitute.
Even in areas farther from the fighting, times were hard. Women like Cassie’s mother and boys like Philip struggled to keep farms running. “No-good soldiers” like the ones Mama warned Cassie about roamed the countryside, stealing and committing acts of violence against civilians. Money was in short supply, and with Southern ports blockaded by Northern ships, all goods were scarce. Basic items like sugar, coffee, nails, writing paper, and fabric either disappeared from stores or cost so much that no one could afford them. Townspeople, unable to produce their own food, suffered the most. Toward the end of the war, food prices were sky-high. Flour sold for as much as $1,000 a barrel. Many families were near starvation. In some southern cities, citizens were reduced to eating rats.
Things were not much better for Confederate soldiers. Johnny Reb, as Southern soldiers were called, might live for days on nothing but crackers called hardtack. Sometimes there was not even that. One soldier wrote to his father, “What is to become of this army without rations. Men can’t fight on nothing to eat.” Men did fight, though—hungry, often barefoot, and with their clothing in rags. It was the lucky Reb who had a coat or blanket to keep off the wind and rain and to see him through the winter. It is no wonder that more soldiers died from sickness than were killed in battle.
Though comforts were greater for the Union soldier—Billy Yink—he also faced the daily threat of dying in battle. Some soldiers decided they could no longer take it all and deserted, or ran away from the army. Deserters who were caught faced the death penalty. Even if a deserter wasn’t caught, he risked being scorned by his family and community. People in those days greatly valued duty, honor, and reputation. They considered a coward or deserter a disgrace to the family.
Late in the war, however, many people changed their attitudes as they grew desperate for their men to come home. Some wives even wrote letters to their husbands, and mothers to their sons, begging them to desert. One heartrending letter tells a father how his children cry from hunger and grow thinner by the day. “Please, Edward,” his wife begs, “unless you come home we must die.”
Eventually, so many Confederate soldiers deserted that it helped bring about that army’s collapse. The end came in April 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, and a few weeks later Joseph Johnston surrendered to Sherman in North Carolina.
With the South’s defeat, the North achieved its goal of preserving the nation. Slavery also came to an end. But the cost was agonizing. The Civil War claimed more than 500,000 lives and left the South in ruins.
About the Author
Elizabeth McDavid Jones is an English teacher and the author of nine books and many magazine and serial stories for young people. She has won the Edgar Award and other accolades for her work. She now lives in North Carolina with her husband and children, where they share their home with a big brown dog and a mountain of dirty laundry. Please visit her at www.elizabethmcdavidjones.com.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text Copyright © 2000, 2009 by Elizabeth McDavid Jones
Map Illustrations by Jean-Paul Tibbles
Line Art by Greg Dearth
Cover design by Amanda DeRosa
ISBN: 978-1-4976-4657-5
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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