“March”

“...the North’s mixed record of high idealism, negligence, and outright cruelty.” (294)

This story follows the father from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott as he rationalizes his abolitionist fervor with the realities of the Civil War. Part historical fiction, part cobbled together from Alcott’s words and the story being told - there is so much to live with in this novel. History is never a straight line. History writers are not without their bias. While some may want to look at the past and draw a line - showing the North to be noble in their quest to end slavery, historically, that wasn’t necessarily the case. March, a chaplain in the Union Army, soon finds what we know to be true; that the relationship between North and South was much more complicated than it seemed on the surface. Slavery. The Underground Railroad. Cotton plantations. The Cotton mills. Abolitionists. Contraband. Violence. Loss. Love. Peace. March tried to see his world through rose colored glasses, only to find that the lenses may have been cracked long before. I feel this book challenges what we think we may know relating to the “why” of the Civil War. It also shows how hard it is to remove those prejudices and stigma and find lenses that show that time period for what it really was…