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hope what Mama heard is just a tale. Nails are nails, so how could anyone accuse James of producing a shoddy product? Not that I’m saying he would do so. Dearest Lizzie, I have always poured out my heart to you, and you are my comfort. I expect you to return the favor.
With loving regards,
    Alice
     
    May 11, 1863
    Darling Lizzie,
    I am glad what Mama heard about James is wrong. Rumors have a thousand feet in this war, and you can’t stomp on every one. (I made that up. Do you like it?) Mrs. Grant had no call to write your friend with such inferences about James. I never liked her. That cast in her eye makes her look so stupid that I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me she was too dumb to slice bread. You do not have to answer to any of those women, Lizzie.
    I think I don’t like this war much. It’s not fair that I am cooped up on this place with an old woman and made to do most of the work. Lordy, I miss Charlie. The parades and fine uniforms and jolly speeches were fine. But now we hear every week of someone who has been killed, and not always in battle. The measles and smallpox are sweeping the Wolverines, and many of the boys that marched off with Charlie now sleep with the dead. In town, I see men with empty sleeves and trouser legs pinned up. There are men on crutches, and I saw one man, who’d lost both legs at Shiloh, push himself along in a dogcart, fighting for space in a muddy road with a sow and her litter. Now where is the glory in that? I wish the war would end, even if Charlie doesn’t get him a Rebel. I am not going to grow away from Charlie whilst he’s gone. I am going to grow toward him. I hope.
    Last evening, the Negro hitched up the wagon, and the three of us rode to Slatyfork to attend a lecture at the church. It was sponsored by our Soldiers Relief, and the oratory was given by a darky who had escaped from a plantation in Arkansas before the war began. Now he speaks to raise money for the cause and to inspire the Unionists. The contraband spoke as good as me or you, and his wife, who is a pretty nappy-headed girl with skin the color of a caramel, was just as tastefully dressed as anyone in the hall—and more fashionable than most, with bigger hoops. As her husband spoke, she sat and knitted stockings for the soldiers, just like me.
    I don’t like slavery any more than the next person, but I never thought much about it. Charlie, neither. He joined up to preserve the Union, not to free darkies. But listening to that black man caused a hurting in my head, until I thought it would break open, and I felt sorrier for those two than for anybody in my life.
    The man was beat scandalous. He told us the slavers whipped women naked and washed them down in brine, but they did the men even worse. Once, “Ole Massa” whipped him forty times, drawing blood every lick, and when he was done, he poured salt into the wounds. But that wasn’t all. He hog-tied the slave and set him near the fire so that the heat would blister the welts.Then he threw a cat on the man’s back to scratch the blisters open. And what had the Negro done to deserve this? He was a house nigger, who had grown up almost as a brother to his master and later became his manservant at the plantation house. His offense: He had forgotten to black Ole Massa’s boots.
    When the contraband had finished his story, there was not a dry eye in the house, except for Nealie’s husband, who was quite disagreeable. He muttered the man was a liar, that slave owners never stropped their niggers. At that, the Negro stood up and removed his shirt, then turned his back to us. It was a mass of ridges from neck to waist, and probably below, too. Why, Lizzie, if a man in Fort Madison beat a mule that bad, he would be turned out by his neighbors.
    After the Negro fastened his shirt again, he beckoned to his wife, who continued the story. She went naked like the other slave children until she was twelve and had to beg for a dress because she had become a