Addy Studies Freedom

The civil war had ended the previous Sunday and the schoolteacher had assigned her students an essay "Why My Heart Is Glad My Country Is Free." Addy's father is going south to get some of her relatives since slavery has ended, although she is also aware that there is discrimination against blacks in her city of Philadelphia.

She starts working on her essay and comes up with an extremely good line, true even today: "But I don't know why there one freedom for colored people and one for white people."

Addy goes to the butcher shop to get her mother some meat and while there learns that President Lincoln had been assassinated.

Many people of both races are afraid that the Civil War might start again now that President Lincoln is dead. Later she finds out that his funeral train is coming to her city and his body will be laid in state at the State House.

Addy and her father get to see the President's body. Addy says she's still worried about the fact that black people are not really treated equally, but her father tells her that President Lincoln laid the way and it's up to them to follow.

There is then a very short bio of the author of the series and then a factual section. There's also a quiz on Lincoln and a list of books about him.

This is a really good, albeit short, book. It manages to say a lot in a few pages. The death of Lincoln was a very major event in the history of the country; it definitely changed the way the South was treated after the end of the war and very probably made the struggle for black equality longer and more difficult.

I also like the way the story is written; the characters are quite real and woven into actual historical events in an excellent manner.

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