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“Is that so?” George reacted in a slow
angry voice that rose as he stalked around the shed at the front
of the farm. “Then
why were you in such a hurry when you saw me approaching?
You were running around like the devil himself was coming
and you almost managed to hide all
your crates under this pile of hay before I got here!”
George grabbed a pitchfork, swiped at the hay pile and
revealed several boxes hidden under the pile.
Then he threw the pitchfork in the dirt at the base of
the man’s feet.
“Please,” the man said softly, realizing he had been
caught, “please don’t take that.
It’s all we have left to sell.
We have been working hard to...”
“Working hard?” George yelled.
“Working hard? You
Yankees don’t know the meaning of hard work.
You sit in your fine clothes and complain about our
slaves and our government while you send your boys to do your
dirty work!”
“Dirty work?” The
man repeated with a confused look on his face.
He stood up a little straighter and appeared
more sure of himself.
His facial expression changed to one of disappointment,
as if he expected more from George.
“This is a war son.
In a war, people die.”
“Of course people die,” George said even angrier.
“But those people are supposed to be soldiers, not
little kids and women and old men.”
The man’s face wrinkled as he tried to understand what
George was getting at.
“This is not just a soldier’s war,” George went on.
“It’s no glorious battle between armies. It’s destruction, it’s murder.”
“Now just hold on a minute,” the man protested.
“Your navy blockades our ports,” George ignored the
man’s comment as he paced back and forth. He looked directly
at the old man and pointed. “Your troops march up and down our lands destroying farms
and cities. When we
work hard its simply to survive.
And sometimes that is not even enough!
Hard work? You,
You strut around day after day talking to each other about how
rotten we Southerners are and plotting about ways to free our
slaves and destroy our land.
You send your troops into our states, burn our homes,
destroy our towns and take our food. Is that what you call
war?”
“I didn’t do any of that,” the man argued softly.
He seemed unsure of himself again as he looked around to
see if anyone was near.
“You didn’t do anything to stop it,” George
replied. “You
probably didn’t even know what they were doing, did you?”
“I heard about Fredricksburg,” the man offered under
his breath.
“Fredericksburg!”
George shouted, as if the word meant something personal
to him. “Fredericksburg!
Just what did you hear about Fredericksburg?”
“I heard that we bombarded the town before the
battle,” the old man replied with his eyes down.
He could tell that George was extremely upset and he
didn’t want to do anything to provoke him.
Especially because the old man was unarmed.
“Did you hear that you destroyed people’s homes?”
George shouted. “Did
you hear that you shattered lives and families and sent orphans
into the streets?”
The man did not respond.
“I didn’t think so,” George snapped. His voice ran
on as he spoke faster and faster.
“And so I am sure you have no idea what it is like to
find a little orphan girl, freezing and starving in the snow.
Or what it is like to realize that her parents have been
killed and the only one left in the world to help her is you but
you are too busy to help her because you have to go fight the
people who killed her parents.
And of course she doesn’t understand all this and she
wants you to stay but you can’t and she cries and you have to
leave her and your heart feels like it’s going to get torn out
of your body.”
The old man cast his eyes down.
“You have invaded my home!” George screamed.
He stamped his foot and spun around as if he were
preaching to an audience. “My
home! My beautiful
Virginia: filled
with trees and mountains and streams and friendly smiling
people. But not
anymore, not any more. While
you’ve been living in peace and quiet on your farm, we’ve
been starving and struggling to defend our homes.”
George felt a rumble in his stomach.
“Do you know what it’s like to not eat for three
days? Do you know
what it’s like to walk mile after mile, day after day with no
shoes on your feet?”
The man’s eyes looked down at George’s feet.
It was the first time he noticed them.
“That’s right,” George shot back, “No shoes.
Haven’t had any for two months.
Your navy won’t let us get any.
Thousands of us have been marching all over this land for
months with no shoes on our feet trying to protect our land from
you invaders. You
attack us everywhere but we beat you back!
We beat you at Bull Run, we beat you back from Richmond,
from Fredricksburg and from Chancerllorsville, but still you
keep sending more and more troops for us to beat back.
Our people have had enough do you hear?
Enough!”
George picked up the pitchfork again and began swinging
it at the fence, the shed, the crates, at anything that got in
his way.
“No more waiting for you to come destroy more of our
land.” he swung the pitchfork at the shed.
“No more watching families wandering the roads with no
homes left.” he
made another hole in a crate.
“No more
marching without shoes!”
another hole.
“No more wondering when and if we’ll have enough to
eat!” another hole and another and another.
“It all ends here, in the North.
We’ll destroy your army, do you hear, we’ll destroy
it. We’ll wander this land of yours until we find your army or
take your cities and we will end this war once and for all!”
George threw the pitchfork in the ground just inches from the man’s
feet. He was
breathing very hard, almost panting
but he felt good. It
had been a long time since he let out all his frustration and
this was quite a relief.
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