from service after Bull Run. Later he joins the Illinois volunteers in Chicago and acquires the nickname Bull Run Jack. Near Pittsburg Landing, in Tennessee, he runs during a surprise attack by the Confederates. He is captured but escapes again during a night march. Hungry and weary, Ellyat arrives at the Vilas farm, where he remains in hiding and falls in love with Melora Vilas. At last, he leaves the farm to seek the courage he had lost near Pittsburg Landing, but not before Melora becomes pregnant by him. He is recaptured soon afterward.

Meanwhile, Wingate returns to Georgia on leave. At Wingate Hall, the war seems far away, for the Confederate ships that successfully run through the Union blockade of Southern ports bring luxuries. Lucy Weatherby, a Virginian whose sweetheart had been killed at Bull Run, attends a dance at Wingate Hall and replaces Sally Dupré in Clay’s affections. Spade, a slave on the nearby Zachary plantation who has dreamed of a free life in the North, escapes.

New Orleans is captured by the Union, thereby dealing a heavy blow to the South. Davis and Lincoln begin to bow under the burdens of the war. Union general George McClellan opens his Peninsular campaign while the Confederacy’s Robert E. Lee inflicts defeat after defeat on the Army of the Potomac. Ellyat goes to a prison in the Deep South.

The fortunes of the Union sink to their lowest ebb after the Confederate victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run while the spirit of John Brown is generally invoked by editors and preachers. Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation. In the meantime, the escaped slave Spade makes his way north and swims across a river to freedom. When he finally reaches the land of the free, he is railroaded into a labor gang. General McClellan is relieved by General Burnside, who, in turn, is relieved by General Hooker, as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Ellyat, now ill, is returned to the North in an exchange of prisoners of war.

Slowly the Confederacy begins to feel the effects of the blockade and the terrible costs of war. Wingate has thoughts of his next leave—and of Lucy. Ellyat spends the dark winter of 1862-1863 convalescing at his home in the cold Connecticut hills. He is due to report to the Army of the Potomac as soon as his recovery is complete. In Tennessee, Melora gives birth to a baby boy.

Generals Grant and Sherman lead the Union forces to victory in the West; Vicksburg is surrounded. Hunger and anti-inflation riots break out in Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. America, meanwhile, is expanding. New industries spring up in the North, and the West is being settled. In Richmond, Shippy, a Union spy posing as a peddler, promises Sophy, a servant at the Pollard Hotel, that he will bring her some perfume from the North. Sophy knows that Wingate and Lucy had stayed together in the hotel. Luke Breckinridge, Sophy’s rebel suitor, is a member of a patrol that stops Shippy to search him. When they find incriminating papers in his boots, Luke gloats, for he is jealous of Shippy.

Stonewall Jackson dies by the guns of his own pickets, while Lee, desperate for provisions, invades the North. Ellyat is in the Union army that meets Lee at Gettysburg. He falls wounded during the battle but finds his courage. After three days of bloody fighting at Gettysburg, Lee falls back to Virginia. Then Vicksburg surrenders, splitting the South in two. Nearly defeated, the South continues to fight doggedly. Union general Sheridan marches through the Shenandoah Valley, leaving it bare and burned. Petersburg is besieged. Luke, along with thousands of other rebel troops, deserts the Confederate army. As he heads back toward his home in the mountains, he takes Sophy with him. Melora and her father, John Vilas, travel from place to place in search of Ellyat; they become a legend in both armies. General Sherman captures Atlanta and continues to march on to the sea. During his march, Wingate Hall catches fire accidentally and burns to the ground. Clay Wingate is wounded in a rearguard action in Virginia. The war comes to a close when Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox.

The war is over but it will not go away. Spade, no longer hopeful about life in the free North, hires out as a farm laborer in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Wingate returns to his ruined home in Georgia, where Sally is waiting. In Connecticut, Ellyat hears stories of strange gypsy travelers who are going from town to town looking for a soldier who was the father of the child of the woman who drives the creaking cart. One day he is standing beneath the crossroads elms when he sees a cart come slowly up the hill. He waits for Melora.

Ellyat farm

Ellyat farm. New England farm of the Ellyat family. Because Benét organizes his poem as alternating pictures of the Civil War as seen from the perspectives of Americans on both sides, he creates a number of fictional characters whose stories reflect those of the larger groups affected by the struggle. Jack Ellyat, the protagonist, comes from a small farm in New England. With great care, Benét sketches both the farm and the surrounding forests and meadows to give readers a sense of the region this character represents. Relying on the reader to bring to the poem certain preconceived notions of regionalism, the poet is able to use a kind of shorthand to suggest values associated with men such as Ellyat.

Wingate Hall

Wingate Hall. Plantation home of Clay Wingate and his family, which the poem contrasts with the simple farmstead on which Ellyat is raised. Benét’s portrait of the southern plantation perpetuates many of the stereotypes about the South. Plantation lifestyle, founded on the system of slavery that Northerners considered an abomination, helps produce in Benét’s young protagonist a sense of honor sometimes devoid of discretion, a predilection for paternalism in dealing with those beneath him in social standing, and an attitude of chauvinism masked as chivalry in his treatment of women. Wingate Hall could have been located in any one of the Southern states, making it an appropriate symbol for the lifestyle that was to disappear at the end of the war.

Vilas home

Vilas home. Home of the Vilas family in the wilderness of the Tennessee woods that becomes a refuge for Jack Ellyat after he escapes from the Confederates who capture him at the Battle of Shiloh. The frontier people in John Brown’s Body are represented in the poem by a number of fictional characters from Kentucky and Tennessee, including the Vilas family. Benét uses the episodes at the Vilas home to discuss the effect of the war on those who still believe that America offers the chance to escape from civilization. The woods around the Vilas home are crisscrossed by soldiers of both armies, and it becomes clear to the Vilas clan that America as a frontier nation must inevitably give way to the encroaching modern industrial age.

*Battlefields

*Battlefields. Benét uses real battlefields, such as those at Bull Run, Shiloh, and Gettysburg, to emphasize the themes of heroism and self-development in his fictional protagonists. Both Ellyat and Wingate fight at these three major battles and, as a result, learn something of the horrors of war. Additionally, they come to understand something of themselves and the values for which they are fighting.

*Washington, D.C

*Washington, D.C. and *Richmond, Virginia. From time to time throughout the poem, Benét shifts the focus to the Northern and Southern capitals. Because this is a historical work, Benét is faithful to the historical record. His major reason for setting some of the action in these cities, however, is that the principal historical figures who determined the strategy for conducting the war were located here. Character studies of both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis are important to Benét’s portrait of the country in crisis. Nevertheless, the cities also have metaphorical value. The mood of politicians and the populace in these two cities shifts with the vicissitudes of battle, and the poet makes it clear that the attitudes of citizens in Richmond and Washington reflect in great part those of the larger populations in the North and South.