The War Within

This is a book about the Civil War in Mississippi in late 1862 and early 1963. The main character is Hannah who is totally pro-South and pro-slavery. She and her family are Jewish, and they have a store in the town. There is apparently no trouble with the other people in town about their religion, and they all fit in quite well.

The first main problem is that the Yankees have taken command of the city, and Hannah's sister Joanna has fallen in love with one of them. Joanna also adopts an anti-slavery attitude, so she and Hannah have a number of major arguments about what is happening.

Another problem arises when the Confederates temporarily re-take the town and set out to destroy the mass of supplies the Union troops had stored there. This ends up destroying a number of the buildings in the town, along with Hannah's home.

Another major problem happens when Ulysses S. Grant issues an order kicking Jewish people out of areas under his jurisdiction (which actually did happen.) The Yankees re-take the town and tell Hannah and her family they will have to get out, and that they intend to confiscate all their store's goods. Worse, one of the Yankees in command of the action has a strong personal hatred of Jews, and the family has to go through a lot on their march out of town to a place outside Grant's jurisdiction.

In the process Hannah nearly dies, two of the families slaves leave, (one remains), and Hannah comes to realize that at least some of what her sister was saying does make sense about people's relationship to other people, and one group not being inferior to another.

I had never heard of this anti-Jewish action on the part of the North but apparently it did take place (Rinaldi does a great job on all her books of checking her historical information), and I ended up sending for a factual book that looks into this anti-Jewish attitude during the Civil War more deeply.

(Apparently Grant was trying to justify this on the assumption that the Jews were war profiteers, which, of course, is a very convenient and very prejudiced stand unless it would be backed up by hard evidence.)

Anyhow, the book is very good and another thought-provoking book from the author.

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