Jubilee

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1966

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Chapters 29-32Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 29 Summary: “Mister Lincoln is our Moses”

Randall Ware greets Jim, who tells Ware about young Marster Johnny’s lung wound. Ware was in Missouri or Alabama during the Battle of Chickamauga. Ware then asks about Vyry, whom Jim reports as being fine; Ware’s children are growing well, too, he adds. Ware tells Jim that Brother Ezekiel is at the Union Army’s winter camp, sick in the hospital and liable not to make it out alive. Jim recalls seeing Brother Zeke behind the Confederate lines, pretending not to recognize him. Ware says that this is because Brother Zeke was working as a spy and was afraid that Jim might have unwittingly revealed his secret to the rebels.

When they go in to see Brother Zeke, he tells them that he’s glad to see “the year of Jubilee” (276), alas, when his people will be freed. He asserts that President Lincoln is the Moses for whom they have been waiting. Ware reminds Brother Zeke that black people still aren’t yet free. When Brother Zeke dies, Jim and Ware dig his grave and “[beg] the army preacher to read the Bible and pray and say a few words over him” (276). Both seem confused about how old the deceased man was; Ware figures 100. They both recall him as a good man, and unusually spry for his advanced age.

Chapter 30 Summary: “Action at Olustee”

At the end of 1863, the Union Army begins to win the Civil War. The South is now dejected. Both sides, however, deny that slavery was the real cause of the war, though it’s obvious that it was. Meanwhile, thousands of black people become contraband, after “fleeing to the protection of the Union armies” (280). They perform many of the same jobs they had as slaves and, again, without any proper compensation. Though, now, they perform those jobs happily, knowing that they will be free.

The North is winning the war because it has “more money, more factories, and more manpower” (280). By Christmas, Missy Salina is still grieving over John Jr.’s death. Vyry does her best to assist Miss Lillian in giving Bob and Susan a nice Christmas. Kevin sends letters home regularly from the warfront, and Lillian looks forward to reading them. He has been in the service for two years and will be home in two weeks. He writes that he doesn’t enjoy the life of a soldier and is eager to return to his family. On February 20, 1864, one day before he is set to return home, Kevin MacDougall participates in a battle at Ocean Pond. A black Union soldier stabs him in the abdomen—though, not before Kevin stabs the man in the groin.

Chapter 31 Summary: “Pensive on her dead gazing”

In the Big House, they are unaware of Kevin’s fate and eagerly prepare for his homecoming. A wagon one day comes up the road, and strangers exit. Miss Lillian immediately senses that something is wrong. She becomes hysterical even before she sees her husband in the wagon. He’s still alive and in great pain. His children look at him and also begin to cry. Though the surgeon general sewed up Kevin’s wound, “the sutures [are] not strong” and “could burst the wound open again” (286). A doctor arrives and examines Kevin. He cries out from excruciating pain, which is only relieved when he finally dies. Missy Salina and Miss Lillian bury him on a cold, windy day. Miss Lillian visits her husband’s grave every day after his burial. Meanwhile, Missy Salina distracts herself from grief by sewing the Confederate flag that she later hangs over her front door.

Chapter 32 Summary: “Confederate specie”

Missy Salina learns from the newspapers that the Union Army will soon invade Georgia. She also reads that Confederate specie is depreciating. Secretary Christopher G. Memminger “[passes] a law on February 17, 1864 requiring the people to turn in their paper currency and buy long-term war bonds at 4 percent interest” (289). Those still holding large bills after April 1 would suffer further depreciation of their currency. Additionally, currency holders would receive two new dollars in exchange for three old ones.

Salina contemplates the news then calls her daughter into the room. When Lillian arrives, Salina announces that they’re going to town. They visit Smith Ambers Barrow, a friend of John Morris Dutton since their childhoods. He sees the Dutton women dismounting from their carriage and goes outside to meet them, while “[directing] one of the hands at the bank to do the necessary chores” (290) for their horses and carriage.

Inside the bank, Salina takes “a large wad of paper money from her hand bag [sic]” (291). She tells Barrow that she wants to buy “five thousand dollars’ worth of bonds” (291). She takes out some papers, which are securities that she wants to exchange for “stocks and cotton investments to help the Confederacy in any way [she] can” (291).

Lillian wonders what will happen if the South loses the war, recalling Kevin’s warnings from a previous letter, but Salina dismisses her pessimism. Barrow, too, tells Salina that she’s taking a bit gamble, but she refuses to believe that the Confederacy will not triumph in defending its cause. Furthermore, she has lost three men in her family to the war and refuses to believe that they died in vain.

Chapters 29-32 Analysis

Despite his devotion to Christianity, the racism that exists among the clergy denies Brother Zeke the respect that he deserves after his death, when the army preacher expresses aversion to presiding over the dead man’s funeral. Such explicit racism further reveals the absurdity of both the North and the South later claiming that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War. This denial marks the beginning of the historical revisionism that the United States instituted to absolve itself of its sins without ever atoning for them.

Salina exemplifies stubborn righteousness by dedicating herself to the Confederate cause and nurturing it in the way that she can no longer nurture and love John Jr. Though it is Lillian who will later enter a regressive state, Salina mirrors her daughter’s future behavior by also embracing a denial of reality and of the news of the South’s increasing losses. Part of what led to the South’s bitter disillusionment after the war was its commitment to insularity and to the foolish belief that their world would never change.