I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men l… - James A. Michener

Where, indeed? Captain Vincent Reed had been born in the city of Richmond, Virginia, of northern parents who were stationed there by the telegraph company. He had attended West Point and he thought he knew something about warfare, having served under General Pope in his long and futile struggle against General Stonewall Jackson. Those men were fighters who would face the enemy till the last bullet was fired, but neither would participate in such a slaughter.

Reed had had his troops in position. He was quite prepared to rush in for the kill, and he had positioned himself so that he would be in the vanguard when his men made their charge against the guns of the young braves threatening the left flank. But when he saw that the enemy had no weapons, that even their bows and arrows were not at hand, and that he was supposed to chop down little girls and old women, he rebelled on the spot, taking counsel with no one but his own conscience.

The constable said, “Just time enough for the scars to heal, so that I can whip them open again.” He thought of this statement a long time and wondered why people so attached to God should take such positive delight in crucifying a man who had precisely the same love for God, but with a different manner of expressing it. He even understood the punishment, for he had observed that all people allied to a church seek to protect it, but he would never understand the pleasure the Puritans took in the infliction of punishment.

He wondered how men could live till they were seventy if they endured such passions as he had known that fifteenth summer, and although he knew many things...he did not even guess that men are able to live because slowly, one by one, they snuff out the fires of spring until only embers burn in white dignity, in loneliness, and often in cold despair.