March

And the blood that perfused the silted eddies of the boot-stirred river also formed a design that is not unlike those fine endpapers. Or-better-like that spill of carmine ink when the impatient hand of our little artist overturned the well upon our floorboards. But these lines, of course, I do not set down. I promised her that I would write something every day, and I find myself turning to this obligation when my mind is most troubled. For it is as if she were here with me for a moment, her calming hand resting lightly upon my shoulder. Yet I am thankful that she is not here, to see what I must see, to know what I am come to know. And with this thought I exculpate my censorship: I never promised I would write the truth.

Who is the brave man—he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination. The brave man, the real hero, quakes with terror, sweats, feels his very bowels betray him, and in spite of this moves forward to do the act he dreads. And yet I do not think it heroic to march into fields of fire, whipped on one’s way only by fear of being called craven. Sometimes, true courage requires inaction; that one sit at home while war rages, if by doing so one satisfies the quiet voice of honorable conscience.

I had absolved Brown, long ago, for the loss of my fortune; I had schooled myself to look back on the episode without bitterness or blame. But I had advanced him money to free human beings, not to slaughter them. I knew I could not forgive, if my innocent ties to Brown implicated me in such killings, and proved the means of undoing the blessed bonds of my family.

I stayed hidden in the woodpile until they were gone. Then I crawled out and lay on the ground, working my fingers into the packed earth. I had cowered in my hole and let one man be tortured and another murdered. Why had I done that? Why had I let fear master me so completely? Because I wanted to live. But what good was living, if one had to live with such self-knowledge? What would my life be, after this night? How could I face my wife, my children, with this shame blazoned upon me like a brand?

Aunt March was the only one of all of us who dared to utter the truth. When I got her note, wrapped around the money I was obliged to beg of her to pay for this journey, I read it and burned it […] I was angry at myself, for not having had the courage to stand aside from the crying up of this war and say, No. Not this way. You cannot right injustice by injustice. You must not defame God by preaching that he wills young men to kill one another. For what manner of God could possibly will what I see here?

“You did not kill that child, a Confederate did. As for the captive Negroes, the war does go on without you, you know. There are others whose efforts might have something to do with liberating those people—all of them—your friends included. It is pride that makes you think like this, that makes you feel as though you are indispensable.”

So this was how it was to be, now: I would do my best to live in the quick world, but the ghosts of the dead would be ever at hand.