Across Five Aprils

by Irene Hunt

  He had to be curt with her to forestall any more questions. After that she didn’t come to his door again, but he knew that if he stirred or moaned under his burden of worry, both Jenny and Nancy would hear him and worry through a sleepless night.

  Eb’s often reiterated, “I’ll be goin’ on soon, Jeth; I won’t be a burden to you much longer,” became like the whippoorwill’s cry-always the same and never ending. Jethro closed his ears to it, but the tensions within him mounted, and the necessity of providing for Eb’s needs in strictest secrecy became a task that seemed to grow in magnitude as the days went by.

  “If I could be sure I’m doin’ the right thing,” he would say to himself, as he watched the dark earth fall away from his plowshares. “If I could feel really set-up about doin’ a fine thing, but I don’t know. Maybe I’m doin’ somethin’ terrible wrong; maybe the next time they come, the Federal Registrars will take me.”

  The letter came one noon when they were all seated at dinner. As so often happened, it was Ed Turner who brought the mail out from town. Jenny ran to the door, eager for a letter from Shadrach; Nancy’s eyes pleaded for word from John.

  But Ed held only one large envelope, and that was addressed to Jethro in a small, cramped handwriting done in very black ink. It was postmarked Washington, D.C.

  “Looks like purty important mail you’re gittin’ Jethro,” Ed said quietly. His eyes were full of puzzled concern.

  Jethro’s head swam. This was the showdown; now, all the family, Ed Turner, and soon the 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.

  He read the letter through, word for word, and while he read, there wasn’t a sound in the cabin beyond the slight rustle of the page in the shaking hand that held it. When he was through, he held the letter out to Jenny, with a long sigh.

  “You can read it out loud, Jenny.”

  Jenny stared at him as if he were a stranger; then she shook her head.

  “It’s your letter, Jeth; you’d best do the readin’.”

  He didn’t know whether he could or not—there was a great pounding in his ears and his breath was short-but he ran his hand across his eyes and swallowed hard. After the first few words, his voice grew steady, and he read the letter through without faltering.

  Executive Mansion

  March 14, 1863

  Master Jethro Creighton

  Hidalgo, Illinois

  Dear Jethro:

  Mr. Hay has called my attention to your letter, knowing as he does the place in my affection for boys of your age and the interest I have in letters coming from my home state of Illinois.

  The problem that you describe is one, among so many others, that has troubled both my waking thoughts and those that intrude upon my sleep. The gravity of that problem has become offar-reaching significance and is one in which the authority of military regulations, the decline of moral responsibility, and the question of ordinary human compassion are so involved as to present a situation in which a solution becomes agonizingly difficult.

  I had, however, made a decision relative to this problem only a few days before receiving your letter. There will be much criticism of that decision, but you will understand when I say if it be a wrong one, I have then erred on the side of mercy.

  The conditions of that decision are as follows: all soldiers improperly absent from their posts, who will report at certain points designated by local recruit offices by April 1, will be restored to their respective regiments without punishment except for forfeiture of pay and allowances for the period of their absence.

  This information you may relay to the young man in question, and I pray that the remorse and despair which he has known since the time of his desertion will bring his better self to the cause for which so many of his young compatriots have laid down their lives.

  May God bless you for the earnestness with which you have tried to seek out what is right; may He guide both of us in that search during the days ahead of us.

  Yours, very sincerely and respectfully, Abraham Lincoln

  10

  In May of 1863 news came from the East of another Union disaster, this time at Chancellorsville. It was frightening news for, whatever one wished to believe, the very obvious fact was that a Union army with the advantage of greatly superior numbers had been terribly beaten by a Confederate army with the advantage of a greatly superior general. The contrast between Robert E. Lee and Joseph Hooker was not one to bring either pride or hope to the Union cause.

  The papers had carried stories and pictures of Joseph Hooker all during the winter of ’62-’63. He was a tall, handsome man with wavy blond hair and the look of a daredevil in his eyes. He was a hard drinker and a hard fighter: “Fighting Joe Hooker” he was called, an arrogant man, highly contemptuous of McClellan and Burnside, of the Confederate Army, and of the possibility of his own defeat. Here was a dashing, fighting, confident man, the papers had said, the kind of general the North so desperately needed. And so he replaced Ambrose Burnside as Commander of the Army of the Potomac. Then there was Chancellorsville, where handsome Joe Hooker folded helplessly before Lee’s onslaught, and in the early summer of ’63, papers that had expressed admiration for his spirit and confidence were screaming for his head.

  But the fall of General Hooker was of little importance compared to the fact that seventeen thousand Union soldiers had gone either to their deaths or to a Confederate prison camp as a result of the battle at Chancellorsville. The same old fear haunted Jethro and his sister, as they silently plowed the young corn during the weeks when more stories of the disaster came with each newspaper: was Shadrach Yale one of the seventeen thousand?

  But in late June a letter came from Shadrach, a letter which reflected the deep gloom that hung over the Army of the Potomac, and the anger felt-not only by the common soldier, but by many of the generals-for the kind of leadership Fighting Joe Hooker had exhibited.

  There was awe, too, in Shadrach’s realization that once more a freak of chance had allowed him to come through alive, but there was no optimism in his hope for future battles.

  I have been through Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, hurt only by the agony of others, but there will be more battles, and you must tell yourself sternly, Jenny, that your love for me is no more sacred than the loves for which thousands upon thousands of women are weeping today. I think it wrong that I write to you with hope and optimism for our future; I think I must prepare you for the possibility-no, the probability-of heartbreak. When a man has looked upon such massive waste of life as I have witnessed in these three battles, the presumption to consider his own little personal dreams becomes a matter of supreme egotism.

  A letter from John was more cheerful. The Army of the Cumberland was on the march with General Rosecrans; for weeks they had been drilling, but now they were sure that action was about to begin. There was Confederate General Bragg in Tennessee, who must face “Old Rosy” before the snows fell. Most of the letter, though, was not about armies or campaigns, but of home, of Jethro’s letter from the President, of Eb’s behavior; there were long paragraphs in which John wanted to know how Nancy was faring, if she was well, how much the little boys had grown, whether or not they remembered their pa. It was a good letter; Nancy read it to the family and over again to Ellen, whose lips moved while she listened as if she were trying to memorize each word.

  Eb wrote to Jethro from Mississippi. He was on a river called the Yazoo, not far from Vicksburg, digging ditches, chopping wood, and building bridges. The heat and the dirt were bad, he said,
and there was an added hardness to his life brought on by his weeks of “improper absence,” but Eb accepted it with humility.

  Its hard to have sum fellers hate you fer what you done but the blame is mine and Ill take what they say to me and do my job till I fall over.

  Eb thought the Confederate General Pemberton, up in Vicksburg, was beginning to sweat, and that was fine-but the mosquitoes were awful, and lots of the boys were sick with malaria.

  The papers had much to say of the operation around Vicksburg. What was Grant doing down there, editors wanted to know. Was he going to continue stumbling all around the country, hesitating, bumbling, waiting week after week with an army mired down in disease-infested marshes? The men who wrote for the newspapers that Jenny and Jethro read aloud at night did not believe the Confederate Pemberton was “beginning to sweat”; Vicksburg, perched high on the bluffs of the Mississippi, had a natural fortification that Grant, with his inept stupidity, could not successfully storm any sooner than Joe Hooker could overtake Robert E. Lee.

  It was known that the President was being besieged to get rid of Grant. After all, wasn’t it true that it was not Grant who had been the victor at Fort Henry, but Admiral Foote and his ironclads? And on second thought, white-haired old C. F. Smith had actually been the brain behind the victory at Donelson. Nobody could deny that Grant had waited too long and had been surprised at Pittsburg Landing, and certainly he had been driven back at Oxford, Mississippi. And in all these stories came the vague charges of drunkenness on the part of the discredited general. The stories were never verified, but they occurred often enough to arouse deep anger in the minds of people whose sons had died under Grant’s command. Ellen and Matt felt that anger ; for many months neither Jethro nor Jenny ever mentioned Grant before their parents.

  Despite the pressures, though, the President did not remove General Grant. But Joseph Hooker was removed-another one of the President’s generals acknowledged as a failure in the command of the Army of the Potomac. Now, a new name came more fully into the public eye: George Gordon Meade. The men who came of a Sunday afternoon to talk of the war with Matt wondered how long this new general would last.

  The news, however, that overshadowed everything else during that June was the activity of Robert E. Lee. He had turned away from Richmond, and now, for the first time during the war, a Confederate army was penetrating into the North, into Shadrach’s home state of Pennsylvania. There were many speculations: if Lee should take the cities of Harrisburg and Philadelphia, might he not go on to Baltimore and then to Washington? Did Lee plan to let Richmond fall and in its stead to seize Washington-wouldn’t the exchange of capitals be worth his while? And weren’t the chances for his success a good deal more than fair? This man, Lee, had become a legend, a fearful one for the North. Would it ever be possible to defeat him? The results of some battles had been a draw, but were they ever a real defeat? The new general, Meade, had never had the experience of planning a campaign or of handling a huge army drawn up into battle; Robert E. Lee had little to fear as he maneuvered his army into Pennsylvania.

  Out of the gloom of these predictions came the news during early July of Gettysburg, a spot of ground in Pennsylvania that Jethro had never heard of before. The news of the battle was confused at first, incoherent, sometimes contradictory, but one thing was certain: here was a clash that roared with a violence and terror such as the country had never known. It was a battle of unbelievable bravery and unbelievable ruthlessness; it was a clash of agonizing errors checkered with moves of brilliant strategy that lasted through three hot July days, after which the news of victory came: a Union victory and a great one, but still not a complete one. With broken young bodies piled high at Gettysburg and thousands of homes rocked in agony over their loss, the beaten army was allowed to withdraw and prepare for still more bloodshed, while the victorious army licked its wounds and made no effort to pursue its opportunities.

  All over the North people were beginning to say, “What is it—what does it mean? Is there bad blood somewhere? Is there a conspiracy among Northern generals that prevents their following up an opportunity for crushing Lee’s army?”

  Then in the midst of the pandemonium over Gettysburg another Union victory was announced: Vicksburg had fallen! General Pemberton, completely surrounded by Grant’s army, had been cut off from all supplies and had been starved into surrender. Grant was a hero once again in the papers that had printed no good word of him in months; Ulysses S. Grant was the man of the hour, and some people with short memories said, “I told you so-old Unconditional Surrender Grant is the man who will win this war. Abe Lincoln was right; they’d better send a barrel of the liquor Grant drinks to some of his other generals. God bless old U. S. Grant!”

  Of the fall of Vicksburg the President said, “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the Sea.” Jethro smiled as he read that. What he would give to talk to Shad about those words of Mr. Lincoln’s, to remember with him that night when they had looked at the long wavy line on a roughly drawn map and had wondered how long the fighting would go on.

  Shadrach, however, was very far away and was a part of the price which the battle of Gettysburg had cost. A letter came addressed to Matt from a spinster aunt of Shadrach’s who lived in Washington, a woman of whom Shad had often spoken. The letter ran in part:.... He was brought here from Gettysburg with serious wounds which became gangrenous before his arrival. I was fortunate in finding him since I am a volunteer nurse at the hospital where he lies. He has had short periods of consciousness during which time he has begged me to write to Jenny Creighton-he calls for her constantly in his delirium. I wish to tell you, sir, that I will gladly pay the girl’s expenses to Washington and give her shelter in my home if you will allow her to make the trip.... I must tell you that my nephew’s condition is very critical....

  Ross Milton had driven up to the farm the day the letter came. The editor was often a visitor, spending hours talking to Matt, staying overnight now and then, and testing Jethro’s progress in the book on English usage. Sometimes Jenny would join in taking the tests, and Ross Milton would tease her a little: “The wife of a schoolmaster must learn to speak correctly, mustn’t she, Jenny?” The family was always glad to see him; he enlivened for a short time the passing of one monotonous day after another.

  Later, on the day the news came from Shadrach’s aunt, Jethro sat with his father and the editor in the yard just outside the cabin door. The hot summer night was velvet black across the fields and in the dooryard too, except for a ray of lamplight that came from the room where Ellen and Nancy sat beside Jenny and tried to comfort her. The three who sat in the dooryard did not speak; there was no sound in the night except for the deep, tired sobs within the cabin.

  Finally Ross Milton leaned forward in his chair. “Matt,” he said in a low voice, “if you will let her go to him, I’ll take her to Washington and see that she is safe.”

  For a while Jethro thought that his father was never going to reply. The old man sat turning his cane between his hands and staring down in the darkness at his feet.

  Finally he said, “Ain’t it ten to one that it’s too late?”

  “As I see it, you’d better gamble, Matt. It will be better for the girl to have tried to get to him even if it is too late. And if it’s not too late-I’m a hard-bitten bachelor, Matt, but I don’t underestimate the possibilities of young love in a situation like this.”

  “I kin pay my own girl’s expense; I’ll not hev her beholden to a stranger. But what about you, Milton? You ain’t in health fer the likes of that journey, air you?”

  “I can clench my teeth against pain in a railway car as well as at home. I’ll go with her if you say the word.”

  “I wouldn’t let them marry,” Matt said slowly. “I thought she was too young—and so she is. Still, a man don’t allus know what’s best. I only know I can’t stand to see her suffer this way if there be one chance fer her to see him alive.” He reached out to Jethro then for aid in helping
him to rise. “I’ll hev to talk with Ellen,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

  It was all arranged that night, and the next morning, when Jethro awoke and went downstairs at dawn, he found Jenny already dressed in her best clothes, her face wan and pale, but her weeping stopped by excitement and a thin hope. She put her arms around her brother, and Jethro returned her embrace. They didn’t say anything; there was too much danger of a breakdown if they talked.

  An hour later Jenny and Ross Milton were gone in the buggy he had driven up from Newton. They would go to Olney, take the train to St. Louis, and from there go on to Washington.

  Jethro did not go to the fields that day; instead he roamed about and finally, as if drawn to it, went up to the room adjoining the schoolhouse—the room Matt Creighton had allowed to be built because “a man has the right to his own fireside after a hard day’s work.”

  The room had been used the winter before by a teacher who had been hired for the three winter months, a term during which Jethro had gone to school for only a few days. The elderly teacher was a man without learning, without the wisdom that some unlearned men acquire with their years, without even the saving grace of kindness. Remembering the wonder and pleasure of learning when Shadrach taught, Jethro walked away from the classroom with fierce resentment.

  “I get more out of staying home and reading the newspapers—the way Shad told me to do—and working out the exercises in Mr. Milton’s book,” he told his father.

  There had been a time when Matt Creighton brooked no criticism of a teacher from his children; they went to school when it was in session, the teacher’s word was law, and their father wanted to hear no complaints concerning either discipline or the quality of instruction. But Matt had changed in his later years. He talked to the teacher for a while one afternoon; that night he gave Jethro permission to remain at home.