Tension had been high in the Civil War after the Union suffered surprising defeats. The tension was also high in Mr. March heart as he had to figure out his true love. In March, by Geraldine Brooks, Mr. March struggled to decide between loving Grace, a slave he met in Virginia and being faithful to his wife at home in Concord. Geraldine Brooks, used true historical accounts to emphasize the horror that people of the Civil War time witnesses and experienced. She showed it through the eyes of Mr. March.
Slaves were often whipped for not following orders. “Strip by strip the lash carved into Grace’s shuddering flesh. Tears were falling by then, heavy drops, joining the leaf dust with blood that ha begun to trickle from the table” (p.39). This quote is when Grace is being
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Many houses welcomed in escaping slaves, at the risk of being fined and sent to jail, as did the March Family. “In Concord because of our work with the Underground Railroad, we had come to know many who fit the latter description. Mostly they were Quakers, whose abolitionism and pacifism sprang from the selfsame core belief: there is that of God in every person, and therefore you may not enslave any man, and neither may you kill him, even to liberate the enslaved” (p.168). This quote shows how in Concord and around Concord, many abolitionists came together to form groups and help the slaves escape. On page 181, Mr. March accounts the story of taking in a young girl named Flora into their home because of the Underground Railroad. “It was a woman-a girl,rather-who came to us in the early darkness of an icy January evening; the first package since the raid of the previous October.” The girl they took in ended up being pregnant, escaping for the chance for their child to be free. Flora’s story was not true, but many slave escape stories are like this one, and Geraldine Brooks allowed us to see it through Mr. March’s eyes in the most heartwarming