Across Five Aprils

by

Irene Hunt

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

Confederacy Term Analysis

The Confederacy was the group of states—Alabama, Arkansas, South and North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia—that ultimately banded together to fight against the United States government (referred to as the Union) in the American Civil War. Many social and political reasons animated their split from the Northern states, including disparities in economic power and political clout between the largely rural, agrarian culture of the South and the urban, industrial North, which Wilse Graham and Bill Creighton both discuss at length. But the chief reason for secession was to protect the practice of slavery, which had made white landowners in the South very rich, and which Northern abolitionists opposed.

Confederacy Quotes in Across Five Aprils

The Across Five Aprils quotes below are all either spoken by Confederacy or refer to Confederacy. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Coming of Age Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

“Well, I’ll tell you: a half of the country has growed rich, favored by Providence, but still jealous and fearful that the other half is apt to find good fortune too. Face it, Uncle Matt; the North has become arrogant toward the South. The high-tariff industrialists would sooner hev the South starve than give an inch that might cost them a penny.

Then Ellen’s voice was heard, timid and a little tremulous; farm women didn’t enter often into man-talk of politics or national affairs.

“But what of the downtrodden people. Wilse? Ain’t slavery becomin’ more of a festern’ hurt each year? Don’t we hev to make a move against it?”

[…] Wilse brought his hand down sharply on the table. “What the South wants is the right to live as it sees fit to live without interference. And it kin live!”

Related Characters: Ellen Creighton (speaker), Wilse Graham (speaker)
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:

“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.

Related Characters: Shadrach Yale (speaker), Ellen Creighton (speaker), Tom Creighton (speaker)
Page Number: 31
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

“I don’t know if anybody ever ‘wins’ a war, Jeth […] a blaze kin destroy him that makes it and him that the fire was set to hurt” […]

“But the South started it, didn’t they, Bill?”

“The South and the North and the East and the West—we all started it. The old slavers of other days and the fact’ry owners of today that need high tariffs to help ’em git rich, and the cotton growers that need slave labor to help ’em git rich and the new territories and the wild talk […] I hate slavery, Jeth, but I hate another slavery of people workin’ their lives away in dirty fact’ries for a wage that kin scarse keep life in ‘em; I hate secession, but at the same time I can’t see how a whole region kin be able to live if their way of life is all of a sudden upset.”

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton (speaker), Bill Creighton (speaker)
Page Number: 39-40
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“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.”

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton (speaker), Shadrach Yale (speaker), Bill Creighton
Page Number: 56-57
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Ellen lay in her bed, limp with the agony of a headache. It always happened when the supply of coffee ran out. Given a cup of strong, hot coffee, the pain would leave her almost immediately; lacking it, her suffering mounted by the hour until the pain became almost unbearable. Schooled to believe that self-indulgence of any kind was morally unacceptable, Ellen was deeply ashamed of her dependency on coffee. She tried brewing drinks of roasted grain or roots, but her nervous system was not deceived by a beverage that resembled coffee only in appearance. She tried stretching out her supply by making a very weak drink, but she might as well have drunk nothing; the headaches were prevented only by coffee that was black with strength.

In late March of 1862, coffee had reached the unheard price of seventy cents a pound, and the papers predicted it would rise even higher.

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton, Ellen Creighton
Related Symbols: Coffee
Page Number: 67
Explanation and Analysis:

“If the editor of the county paper ain’t against freedom of speech, could I jest put one more question to this young ’un?” Without waiting for a reply, the man called Wortman turned again to Jethro. “What I want to ask you is this: is yore pa good and down on Bill? Does he teach you your brother is a skunk that deserves shootin’ for goin’ against his country?”

Jethro felt a great weakness. He had to steady himself against the counter for a second, and when he spoke the words were the first ones that occurred to him.

“My pa don’t teach me one way or the other. He knows that I think more of my brother than anybody else in the world—no matter where he is. And that’s all I’ve got to say to you.” He looked directly at the man with an anger that dissipated his weakness.

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton (speaker), Guy Wortman (speaker), Ross Milton, Bill Creighton, Matthew Creighton
Page Number: 78-79
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Jethro heard someone shout his father’s name and Bill’s and the word Copperheads.

Matt fumbled his way to the front door. “Show yore faces,” he called. “Come up and give me a chance to talk.”

There was only raucous, drunken laughter at his words. A bundle of something was thrown at the gate, and then the riders galloped on.

Jethro scrambled down the ladder and ran out into the yard. At the gate there was a bundle of switches tied together with a cord, the symbol adopted by local ruffians as a warning of punishment to follow. He tore off the paper that was attached to the cord and carried it inside to the table, where Ellen had lighted a lamp. On the paper in large printed letters was the message: “Theres trubel fer fokes that stands up fer there reb lovin sons.”

Related Characters: Jethro Creighton, Bill Creighton, Matthew Creighton, Ellen Creighton, Guy Wortman
Page Number: 111
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Has justice been done, gentlemen? Has an ailing man who commands the respect of those in this county who recognize integrity—has this man suffered enough to satisfy your patriotic zeal?

May I remind you that Tom Creighton died for the Union cause, that he died in battle, where a man fights his opponent face to face rather than striking and scuttling off into the darkness?

And just in passing, Gentlemen, what have you done lately for the Union cause? Of course you have burned a man’s property—barn, farm implements, hay, and grain; you have polluted his well with coal oil and terrified his family. Furthermore, you have done it quietly, under cover of darkness, never once asking to be recognized in order to receive the plaudits of the county at large. But, has any one of you faced a Confederate bullet? Well, Matt Creighton’s boy has.

Related Characters: Ross Milton (speaker), Bill Creighton, Matthew Creighton, Eb Carron, John Creighton, Tom Creighton, Guy Wortman
Page Number: 118-119
Explanation and Analysis:

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 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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Confederacy Term Timeline in Across Five Aprils

The timeline below shows where the term Confederacy appears in Across Five Aprils. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
Coming of Age Theme Icon
The Realities of War  Theme Icon
...drives the team into the yard with the news that a few days earlier, the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter to prevent the federal troops there from receiving provisions. After a... (full context)
Chapter 3
Coming of Age Theme Icon
Self-Determination Theme Icon
Hardship, Suffering, and Beauty Theme Icon
...plans to go to their cousin Wilse in Kentucky, and from there he’ll join the Confederate Army. He’s finally decided that, although neither the North nor the South are wholly right... (full context)
Chapter 4
Coming of Age Theme Icon
Self-Determination Theme Icon
...And the story of Fort Henry—where Grant prevailed against his former classmate from military school, Confederate General Buckner—offers a painful reminder of the rift in their own family that Bill’s decision... (full context)
Coming of Age Theme Icon
Personal Conviction Theme Icon
Hardship, Suffering, and Beauty Theme Icon
...He sketches a map of the states with their main rivers and railroads and the Confederate line. Taking the two forts allowed the Union Army to compromise the Confederates’ supply routes... (full context)
Chapter 5
Coming of Age Theme Icon
...him with some degree of ill-will about Bill, the brother who rebelled and joined the Confederates. (full context)
Self-Determination Theme Icon
...into Jethro’s face and demands to know if the rumors that Bill has joined the Confederates and is “down south shootin’ our boys” are true. Jethro replies, truthfully if vaguely, that... (full context)
Coming of Age Theme Icon
Self-Determination Theme Icon
Personal Conviction Theme Icon
...child. Still, other men join in expressing the general low opinion about Bill joining the Confederates. (full context)
Personal Conviction Theme Icon
...long history as a free state, the close ties between many southern Illinoisans with the Confederate states has fueled rising tempers which sometimes spill over into violence. Twilight has come by... (full context)
Chapter 6
Coming of Age Theme Icon
Self-Determination Theme Icon
...cabin. At the gate, they start shouting about Bill and the family being “Copperheads,” or Confederate sympathizers. From the doorway, Matt dares them to show their faces, but the men scoff... (full context)
Chapter 7
Coming of Age Theme Icon
Self-Determination Theme Icon
...Union troops himself. His comeuppance comes when he occupies the city of Corinth, where 20,000 Confederate troops had regrouped. His overly cautious, painfully slow approach allowed ample time for the Confederate... (full context)
Coming of Age Theme Icon
Self-Determination Theme Icon
...for all to see. The North lacks a unifying leader to match up to the Confederates’ General Robert E. Lee. If the North stands for the righteous cause, Jethro wonders, why... (full context)
Chapter 8
The Realities of War  Theme Icon
...Jethro understands from the papers how its battles helped the Union Army toward breaking the Confederate line at the Mississippi River. But the fall brings a shift; Confederate forces regain ground... (full context)
Coming of Age Theme Icon
The Realities of War  Theme Icon
...throughout the North. The commanding Union general sacrifices wave after wave of men to reach Confederate troops entrenched atop the surrounding hills. Jethro and Jenny wait anxiously until a letter finally... (full context)
Chapter 10
Coming of Age Theme Icon
The Realities of War  Theme Icon
The papers carry news of another disastrous defeat in May 1863. In Chancellorsville, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s superior military leadership wins the battle even though the Union forces... (full context)
The Realities of War  Theme Icon
...work of soldiering and the prevalence of malaria among the ranks. Eb contends that the Confederate forces in Vicksburg are “beginning to sweat,” but the newspapers don’t share his optimism—their opinion... (full context)
Coming of Age Theme Icon
The Union forces still lack the leadership of a general like the Confederacy’s Robert E. Lee, who seems to be preparing to attack Washington, D.C. itself. Worried Northerners... (full context)
Chapter 11
Coming of Age Theme Icon
The Realities of War  Theme Icon
...to understand the confusing newspaper reports of the chaotic Battle of Chickamauga Creek, where the Confederate forces deal a terrible but incomplete defeat to the Union Army in September 1863. Although... (full context)
Coming of Age Theme Icon
The Realities of War  Theme Icon
After repulsing most of the Union forces, Confederate snipers pin down the remaining men and prevent food or supplies from reaching them. John... (full context)
Coming of Age Theme Icon
...of the war may be in sight, but this just makes Northerners angrier at the Confederate states. President Lincoln offers amnesty for former Confederate soldiers and charts a path for Confederate... (full context)
Coming of Age Theme Icon
The Realities of War  Theme Icon
In August, Union forces capture the important Confederate seaport of Mobile, Alabama; in September, they win Atlanta; and in October, they score a... (full context)
Self-Determination Theme Icon
John writes home about the Battle of Franklin. Afterward, he finds Bill among the captured Confederate forces to whom he hands out rations. His commander allows him a private talk with... (full context)
Chapter 12
The Realities of War  Theme Icon
Finally, in the second week of the fifth April of the war, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse.... (full context)