Shadrach Yale Character Analysis

Bill, his favorite, was a big, silent man who was considered “peculiar” in the neighborhood. In an environment where reading was nor regarded highly, there was something suspect about a young man who not only cared very little for hunting or wrestling and not at all for drinking and rampaging about the county, but who read every book he could lay his hands upon as if he prized a printed page more than the people around him. He wasn’t quite held in contempt, for he had great physical strength and was a hard worker, two attributes admired by the people around him; but he was odd, and there was no doubt of that […] He had even attended school the previous winter when work was slack, which surely was a fool thing to do unless one as interested in “breakin’ up school.”

“The Confederates demanded that Anderson give up the fort and all government property in it. He refused. A Southern general—Beauregard is his name—gave him an hour’s warning and then opened fire on Sumter before dawn Friday morning.”

“And Anderson?”

“Held out for more than thirty hours, then surrendered the fort on Saturday afternoon.”

“You mean—our man give in?” Tom exclaimed incredulously.

Shadrach passed his hand over his eyes wearily. “What else could he do? Hungry men can’t hold out long; they hadn’t eaten since Thursday night. More than that, the inside of the fort was in flames. They had to wrap wet cloths over their faces to keep from suffocating.”

“Was—was there lots of boys hurt bad, Shad?” Ellen asked in a tight voice.

The deep ruts in the road were frozen and glazed with ice; the wind had a clean sweep of across the prairies, a weep that sometimes seemed about to carry Jethro before it. Tears froze on his cheeks, and the cold pounded against his forehead as he trudged along, weighted by the heavy, oversized shoes and many layers of clothing. It was bitter, but not beyond the ordinary; suffering at the mercy of the elements was accepted by Jethro as being quite as natural as the hunger for green vegetables and fresh fruit that was always with him during the winter. When one found comfort, he was grateful, but he was never such a fool as to expect a great deal of it. The hardships one endured had a purpose; his mother had been careful to make him aware of that.

“Seems like I can’t face up to yore goin’.”

“I’m not eager for it either, Jeth, not by a long way. I’ve got a lot of plans for the next forty of fifty years of my life and being a soldier is not a part of any single one of them.”

“Do you hev to do it then?”

“I guess I do. There’s been a long chain of events leading up to this time; the dreams of men in my generation are as insignificant as that—” he snapped his fingers sharply. “We were foolish enough to reach manhood just when the long fizzling turned into an explosion.”

If someone had asked Jethro to name a time when he left childhood behind him, he might have named that last week of March in 1862. He had learned a great deal about men and their unpredictable behavior the day he drove alone to Newton; now he was to learn what it meant to be the man of a family at ten. He had worked since he could remember, but his work had been done at the side of some older members of the family; when he had grown tired, he was encouraged to rest or sometimes he was dismissed from the task altogether. Now he was to know labor from dawn till sunset; he was to learn what it meant to scan the skies for rain while corn burned in the fields, or to see a heavy rainstorm lash grain from full, strong wheat stalks, or to know that hay, desperately needed for winter feeding, lay rotting in a wet quagmire of a field.

“I’m so scared, Jeth. Seems I hadn’t known what war was till Danny Lawrence come bringin’ us this awful word of Tom.” She closed the Bible and crossed her forearms on its faded cover. “I used to dream about the nice home Shad and me would have and how I’d keep it bright and pretty, how I’d wait of an evenin’ to see him comin’ down the road toward home. Nowadays I don’t make any plans; I just don’t dare to have any dreams for fear someday a soldier will come home and tell us that he was standin’ beside Shad, the way Danny was standin’ beside Tom—”

She got up abruptly and put the Bible back on the shelf among the books Shadrach had left. Together she and Jethro walked silently out into the barnlot and got their teams ready to go back to the fields.

It is unfortunate that congressmen and their ladies should have been deprived of this spectacle. There was drama here, I can tell them—thousands upon thousands of us crossing the Rappahannock with banners flying, drums rolling, and our instruments of death gleaming in the sunlight. They could have seen those thousands scrambling up the innocent-looking wooded hills and falling like toy soldiers brushed over by a child’s hand; thousands of young men whose dreams and hopes were snuffed out in a second and who will be remembered only as simple soldiers who fell in a cruel, futile battle directed by men who can hardly be called less than simple murderers.

Bill, his favorite, was a big, silent man who was considered “peculiar” in the neighborhood. In an environment where reading was nor regarded highly, there was something suspect about a young man who not only cared very little for hunting or wrestling and not at all for drinking and rampaging about the county, but who read every book he could lay his hands upon as if he prized a printed page more than the people around him. He wasn’t quite held in contempt, for he had great physical strength and was a hard worker, two attributes admired by the people around him; but he was odd, and there was no doubt of that […] He had even attended school the previous winter when work was slack, which surely was a fool thing to do unless one as interested in “breakin’ up school.”

“The Confederates demanded that Anderson give up the fort and all government property in it. He refused. A Southern general—Beauregard is his name—gave him an hour’s warning and then opened fire on Sumter before dawn Friday morning.”

“And Anderson?”

“Held out for more than thirty hours, then surrendered the fort on Saturday afternoon.”

“You mean—our man give in?” Tom exclaimed incredulously.

Shadrach passed his hand over his eyes wearily. “What else could he do? Hungry men can’t hold out long; they hadn’t eaten since Thursday night. More than that, the inside of the fort was in flames. They had to wrap wet cloths over their faces to keep from suffocating.”

“Was—was there lots of boys hurt bad, Shad?” Ellen asked in a tight voice.

The deep ruts in the road were frozen and glazed with ice; the wind had a clean sweep of across the prairies, a weep that sometimes seemed about to carry Jethro before it. Tears froze on his cheeks, and the cold pounded against his forehead as he trudged along, weighted by the heavy, oversized shoes and many layers of clothing. It was bitter, but not beyond the ordinary; suffering at the mercy of the elements was accepted by Jethro as being quite as natural as the hunger for green vegetables and fresh fruit that was always with him during the winter. When one found comfort, he was grateful, but he was never such a fool as to expect a great deal of it. The hardships one endured had a purpose; his mother had been careful to make him aware of that.

“Seems like I can’t face up to yore goin’.”

“I’m not eager for it either, Jeth, not by a long way. I’ve got a lot of plans for the next forty of fifty years of my life and being a soldier is not a part of any single one of them.”

“Do you hev to do it then?”

“I guess I do. There’s been a long chain of events leading up to this time; the dreams of men in my generation are as insignificant as that—” he snapped his fingers sharply. “We were foolish enough to reach manhood just when the long fizzling turned into an explosion.”

If someone had asked Jethro to name a time when he left childhood behind him, he might have named that last week of March in 1862. He had learned a great deal about men and their unpredictable behavior the day he drove alone to Newton; now he was to learn what it meant to be the man of a family at ten. He had worked since he could remember, but his work had been done at the side of some older members of the family; when he had grown tired, he was encouraged to rest or sometimes he was dismissed from the task altogether. Now he was to know labor from dawn till sunset; he was to learn what it meant to scan the skies for rain while corn burned in the fields, or to see a heavy rainstorm lash grain from full, strong wheat stalks, or to know that hay, desperately needed for winter feeding, lay rotting in a wet quagmire of a field.

“I’m so scared, Jeth. Seems I hadn’t known what war was till Danny Lawrence come bringin’ us this awful word of Tom.” She closed the Bible and crossed her forearms on its faded cover. “I used to dream about the nice home Shad and me would have and how I’d keep it bright and pretty, how I’d wait of an evenin’ to see him comin’ down the road toward home. Nowadays I don’t make any plans; I just don’t dare to have any dreams for fear someday a soldier will come home and tell us that he was standin’ beside Shad, the way Danny was standin’ beside Tom—”

She got up abruptly and put the Bible back on the shelf among the books Shadrach had left. Together she and Jethro walked silently out into the barnlot and got their teams ready to go back to the fields.

It is unfortunate that congressmen and their ladies should have been deprived of this spectacle. There was drama here, I can tell them—thousands upon thousands of us crossing the Rappahannock with banners flying, drums rolling, and our instruments of death gleaming in the sunlight. They could have seen those thousands scrambling up the innocent-looking wooded hills and falling like toy soldiers brushed over by a child’s hand; thousands of young men whose dreams and hopes were snuffed out in a second and who will be remembered only as simple soldiers who fell in a cruel, futile battle directed by men who can hardly be called less than simple murderers.