Across Five Aprils

by

Irene Hunt

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Themes and Colors
Coming of Age Theme Icon
The Realities of War  Theme Icon
Self-Determination Theme Icon
Personal Conviction Theme Icon
Hardship, Suffering, and Beauty Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Across Five Aprils, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Personal Conviction Theme Icon

Set during the American Civil War, Across Five Aprils imaginatively explores many dearly held American beliefs and values, including the importance of democracy, the value of freedom, and the value of hard work. When social and political issues divide Northern and Southern states, ultimately leading to the Civil War, it shows how unclear and muddied right and wrong can be. In doing so, it develops a powerful argument not just for the importance of American values, but for the ways in which debate and testing can strengthen those values. Accordingly, the book argues that the best way to live up to America’s values is to educate oneself and form nuanced opinions rather than blindly accepting deceptively simple truths.

Thus, the novel valorizes Bill, who carefully considers many of the animating political and social issues beneath the Civil War and ultimately chooses to join the Confederate Army to support Southern farmers. Conversely, while Guy Wortman expresses pro-Union sentiment, he wants to reduce the war to a simple black-and-white issue rather than considering its full complexity. The novel punishes him for his refusal to look for nuance or to lay his life on the line for his alleged values. Meanwhile, the novel celebrates how people with a stronger moral sense, like Shad, Matt, and Ross Milton, accept and admire Bill’s decision to act on his principles, even if they disagree with them. Importantly, Jethro discovers his capacity to respect different opinions by watching others argue and fight over their beliefs. At first, Jethro accepts the beliefs that his older family members hold without interrogation. But when his cousin Wilse brings an outside perspective from Kentucky, when Bill goes south, and when Shad teaches Jethro to see the strengths and weaknesses of the Union generals he admires, Jethro learns to test received ideas against experience. In doing so, his faith in the country and what it stands for—especially represented by the figure of Abraham Lincoln—grows, rather than diminishes. Ultimately, the novel suggests, one’s values and beliefs can only be clarified and refined by testing them against personal experience and the views of others.

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Personal Conviction ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Personal Conviction appears in each chapter of Across Five Aprils. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Personal Conviction Quotes in Across Five Aprils

Below you will find the important quotes in Across Five Aprils related to the theme of Personal Conviction.
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 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:
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 5 Quotes

“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:

“There be things that’s evil in these woods tonight. I seed evil apassin’ my place a while ago, comin’ in from the shortcut road to town and reelin’ in the saddle. I heered evil braggin’ in the saloon today about layin’ fer a young ’un on his way home.” He reached over and took the reigns from Jethro’s hands. “I’d best drive till we’re out of the brush,” he added. We’re gittin’ close to the place where some piz’nous snake might strike quick.”

The world was turning upside down for Jethro. He felt as if he were someone else […]. When he tried to speak, he found that […] his lips worked as they had often seemed to work in a bad dream to form the words that he wanted to say, but no sound passed them, and there was nothing to do but sit quietly while his mind floundered in the uncertainties that beset it.

Related Characters: Dave Burdow (speaker), Jethro Creighton, Mary Creighton, Travis Burdow, Guy Wortman
Page Number: 90-91
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 9 Quotes

There was, however, no reason why Hig Phillips should have avoided the draft except that he was a lazy bachelor […who] had been known to adhere to the opinion that fools could do the fighting while men of intelligence and property might take pleasure in the prospect of a long and easy life. He was not generally admired for these views, but that fact bothered him hardly at all […] until one moonless night a band of young men visited him—men who knew what gangrenous wounds were like, what marches through cold rain or blistering heat meant, while hunger gnawed at their stomachs or weakness from typhus or dysentery brought agony to every step; men who had seen the dead piled high on smoking battlefields and had come to believe that the soldier of two years had done his share, that the burden should now fall upon other shoulders.

Related Characters: Bill Creighton, Hig Phillips
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis:

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:
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

Ed brought the boy’s letter down for Matt to read. In it the boy told of the burning of Columbia, of how the soldiers laughed as a great wind fanned the flames, of the loot carried off, of mirrors and pianos smashed, and of intimate family treasures scattered to the winds by men who seemed to have gone mad. […]

“What is this goin’ to do to an eighteen-year-old boy, Matt? Kin a lad come through weeks of this kind of actions without becomin’ a hardened man? Is human life goin’ to be forever cheap to him and decency somethin’ to mock at? […] these boys air goin’ to believe that they be heroes for lootin’ and burnin’, fer laughin’ at distress, fer smashin’ the helpless without pity. In some ways Sammy is more of a child than yore Jeth here; he goes with the crowd without thinkin.’ Mary and me has had to guard against that way of his.

Related Characters: Ed Turner (speaker), Jethro Creighton, Ross Milton, Bill Creighton, Matthew Creighton
Page Number: 196
Explanation and Analysis:

“[…] Jeth, after the thirteenth amendment has become a part of our Constitution and for years afterward [...] there will be men and women with dark faces who will walk the length and width of this land in search of the bright promise the thirteenth amendment holds out to them. […] What’s going to happen to them, Jeth? What will become of men and women who have known nothing but servitude all the days of their lives? They are without experience, without education; they’ll be pawns in the hands of exploiters all over the nation. […] see if [Northern abolitionists] extend the hand of friendship to the uneducated, unskilled men who will come north looking to them as a savior. […] I tell you, all of us are getting a little quieter when the question comes up as to what we are to do about the products of slavery.

Related Characters: Ross Milton (speaker), Jethro Creighton
Page Number: 200
Explanation and Analysis: