Near your home, the city of Richmond is in ruins.
During General Sherman’s March last year, Union soldiers torched buildings and destroyed crops in Georgia. They ripped up railroad tracks all the way from Atlanta to Savannah. But here, Confederate soldiers burned the city. Why would they do that? They knew the Union Army was on the way, so they wanted to ruin the city. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in the war. Now, nobody has money to put up new buildings.
You wonder where your family will live now. Will you still work like your mother and father? Will you be able to find members of your family who were sold to other plantations? It’s possible that your family might move far away, if you can find a way to get there safely. For right now, you stay close by.
