One of the things I found interesting about this story is the fact that the woman knew that there were people in the mountains that could help her baby, yet the text never states where she got this information from. Why would a woman with a sick baby go into the mountains to seek help unless she was previously told that there would be someone there to help her baby? She mentions that "her husband had been in Salisbury at the same time as Albery Richardson, and had escaped [...] These people might have saved him from death" (262). Does that imply that her husband ran away from the army, was helped by this family and told his wife to take their sick child to the mountains to be saved? We know so little of Mrs. Denby's background except that she's from New York, has a sick baby and a dead husband, and yet knows where to seek just the kind of help her baby needs. I found the whole thing rather odd.
I also found it interesting that the Yares family lives a in-the-middle-of-the-road life. They chose not to pick a side during the war because they didn’t feel that they could “argy or jedge whether slavery war wholesomest or not. It was out of our sight” (260) yet because they decided to stay out of the war, it only made them more of a target. With the Union hunting the Yares men “jest as if they war wolves” (261) and the Confederates thinking “the best use to make of the whole lot is to order them out to be shot” (266) it seems like it would have been more peaceful for the Yares if they had simply joined the war effort.
It’s really interesting that you brought up the mother’s back-story because I was wondering the same thing the whole time. Isn’t it kind of ridiculous that a woman would put so much faith in people she has never met? As weird as it is, I think the point is separate; it is that for the nation to heal there needs to be a trust between the north and the south. The nation needs to forget previous borders and recognize itself as one again.
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