Across Five Aprils

by

Irene Hunt

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Across Five Aprils makes teaching easy.

Abraham Lincoln Character Analysis

Abraham Lincoln is the 16th president of the United States. His election in 1861 deals a serious blow to the Democratic Party (at the time, the Democratic Party was primarily aligned with white, slaveholding landowners in the South) and its hold on federal power, thus adding fuel to the growing Southern secession movement. As president, Lincoln oversees the Civil War at the head of the Union. His popularity in the North waxes and wanes as Union generals like Ulysses S. Grant and George B. McClellan achieve victory or suffer defeat in battle. A careful thinker, Lincoln approaches issues thoughtfully and tries to consider all the alternatives. This earns him the respect of men like Matt Creighton and Shadrach Yale. Jethro thinks Lincoln’s resistance to war a weakness initially, but he comes to understand that Lincoln represents a different type of maturity, one founded on mercy. Lincoln exemplifies mercy when he offers amnesty to Northern deserters or anticipates the need to reunify the North and the South, not just punish the South for the war. He is assassinated just days after the end of the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes in Across Five Aprils

The Across Five Aprils quotes below are all either spoken by Abraham Lincoln or refer to Abraham Lincoln. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Coming of Age Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1  Quotes

“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.”

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton (speaker), Ellen Creighton (speaker), Matthew Creighton, Abraham Lincoln
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, George B. McClellan
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

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?”

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton (speaker), Matthew Creighton, Eb Carron, Abraham Lincoln, Tom Creighton, Travis Burdow
Page Number: 153-154
Explanation and Analysis:

“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.

Related Characters: Ed Turner (speaker), Jethro Creighton, Matthew Creighton, Eb Carron, Abraham Lincoln
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Bill Creighton, Abraham Lincoln
Page Number: 182-183
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

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.”

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton, Jenny Creighton, Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Tom Creighton, Nancy Creighton
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:
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Abraham Lincoln Quotes in Across Five Aprils

The Across Five Aprils quotes below are all either spoken by Abraham Lincoln or refer to Abraham Lincoln. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Coming of Age Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1  Quotes

“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.”

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton (speaker), Ellen Creighton (speaker), Matthew Creighton, Abraham Lincoln
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, George B. McClellan
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

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?”

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton (speaker), Matthew Creighton, Eb Carron, Abraham Lincoln, Tom Creighton, Travis Burdow
Page Number: 153-154
Explanation and Analysis:

“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.

Related Characters: Ed Turner (speaker), Jethro Creighton, Matthew Creighton, Eb Carron, Abraham Lincoln
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Bill Creighton, Abraham Lincoln
Page Number: 182-183
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

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.”

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton, Jenny Creighton, Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Tom Creighton, Nancy Creighton
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis: