Bull Run

“It takes but one pebble to start an avalanche.” James Dacy, p 84

I’ve always considered myself lucky to have grown up in Alexandria, VA near DC, surrounded by history, be it battlefields, monuments or museums. I’ve biked around Bull Run, my cousins live in Manassas, I’ve driven through the Shenandoah mountains, Route 1 becomes Jefferson Davis Highway, etc. These are significant places with significant meanings earned in the Civil War, but on a daily basis, they don’t mean much when you live there. Encircled by Virginia history, I tuned it out as a kid and just went about my business, eventually coming to Williamsburg – not the place to go if trying to avoid Virginia history. And yet, history is so drilled into my head that I forget it all the time! The Civil War alone is incredibly interesting though. What if the south had really seceded from the north?

Again, I’m impressed with Paul Fleischman’s ability to write from different perspectives, from different sides. The quote at the beginning of my post is so simple, but accounts for so many actions. Many of these soldiers, it doesn’t matter which side, were just fighting to fight, defending their homeland and cutting down others based on rumors and hearsay and personal beliefs. A seed of doubt or disdain or dislike can destroy any relationship and here Fleischman has shown what it means to have that seed sown. Unlike in Seedfolks, where people coming together to form a community, Bull Run illustrates communities being ripped apart. Fleischman pulls on all the emotions from soldiers, women at home, children, doctors, passersby. Anger, fear, doubt, disgust, hate, and even hope – hope that this will end, that the person they just attacked will actually live, that the present day will end and the next will come.

Even though the characters had short chapters, I felt like I was really able to connect with them. Of course, each time a new chapter started, I spent time looking at the woodcuts (which I was so grateful for) trying to remember what had happened to them when I left them last. The doctor’s character reminded me of Sam, from Seedfolks. He was the one who wanted to heal and to help, but was deeply against this war, just as Sam noticed the divisions in the garden to be human nature. “Those who’d died, I told myself, at least hadn’t lived to maim and murder countless other men in battle. It was a thought I never shared with the officers.” Dr. William Rye, pg 26.