Research - Honor

    Honor was very important in the old South. I want this story to give a realistic picture of South Carolina in the 1860s. That's why I'm spending this time on research. It's not about proving anything. People I know have already made up their minds about me. I've tried many times in my life to impress people. I've had some spectacular failures. I'm not trying to prove anything about me. That's a fool's errand. There's people I know that think they have me all figured out. The hospital, for starters. Sometimes I still try to prove the hospital wrong, but a lot of people I gave up. I can't hold onto the past. I can't relitigate and play out the same old narratives, the same old arguments, the same old appearances. I could do that from now until the end of time, it would make no difference but make me miserable. I try to keep my distance. I don't have the energy for that kind of thing. 

    It took me a while to realize that I can't change people's minds. They have to want to change their beliefs, and most people don't want to do that. It's that famous saying about arguing... no one changes their mind in the end. I don't want to litigate my life story. I'll lose every time. It's not going to help anyone to relitigate my story. There is something I can do, however. I can try to do justice to a story about Greenville. I don't think it will be so hard to do that, because it's not about me, thank God. I may have been born here, but my family isn't from here. So, hopefully I can be impartial, because I really want to give a true sense of what Greenville was like back then. 

    There were a lot of sons that went to war, and I'm writing this story about sons. Young men have something to prove, if not to their fathers, then to society. There were a lot of young men that went off to war back then. Hopefully I can illustrate what it was like to live through that. 

    For example, there was a family that was very important to Greenville that I have mentioned, the Earle family. There were many Earle's fighting not just for the South, there were some fighting for the North, though I don't know if the Northern ones were related in any way. The Southern ones included some brothers and cousins. Joseph Earle became a Senator. Alexander Campbell Earle moved to Alabama to farm. George Washington Earle moved back to Anderson. Lieutenant Claudius Eugene Earle commanded Company B of the 4th Volunteers at Stone Bridge, Battle of Bull Run, and shortly thereafter jumped from the sixth floor of the Ballard House Hotel in Richmond. It's not clear why he committed suicide. He left a letter with instructions on distributing his property and referring to slanders made against him regarding a young woman. 

    Sometimes honor can drive men to do strange things. If I can learn enough and work out the plot and the dialog, then perhaps I can illustrate what honor led the men of Greenville to do. Or perhaps not. But I intend to try. That is what I hope to accomplish. With everyone so concerned about what I do and so confused as to the reasons, I've lost the desire to explain myself. It's exhausting. But I think I can explain Greenville. Anyways, I'm confident that explaining Greenville will be a lot easier then playing the appearances game. 

    Meanwhile, I have to finish getting all the paperwork in order for Accountec to start doing deliveries.