How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
A bunch of local boys met up after their work, pretending to soldier. You couldn't get many boys to stick up for U.S. Grant and the North that April. Only the Henson boys and Gideon Hickman and Jack Popejoy. And Noah.
[…]
Down the road by the old stone structure that served as schoolhouse, a bigger bunch of boys drilled. But they drilled for the South and Jeff Davis. (2.39, 41)
This novel doesn't get into too many of the politics and reasons why Southern Illinois is so split between support for the North and support for the South, but it is interesting to see how nothing is black and white—or blue and gray, as the case may be.
Quote #2
Then this month when Little Napoleon Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay, the whole sky darkened. Another week and Lincoln had proclaimed his blockade of the Southern ports. Now he was calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers to fight. (3.9)
Things are heating up for sure, but it takes some time for the kettle to boil. War is like that: it takes a while for everyone to get their forces lined up so there can be a war.
Quote #3
It was true there was unrest up there. On the day Lincoln took his oath of office, a Confederate flag was rung up over the Berthold mansion in St. Louis. Confederate flags rose above some of the best houses on Olive Street, according to word we'd had. People said the only safeguard to Federal authority in Missouri was the St. Louis arsenal. Soon, people said, there'd be blood in the streets. (3.35)
St. Louis, a large city in a border state and a major gateway to the valuable Mississippi River, doesn't have the option of remaining neutral, and her citizens are ready to fight each other to make sure the city goes their way.