Daily Story
DIVORCE
“This situation reminds me of a Union man in Kentucky whose two sons enlisted in the Federal Army. His wife was of Confederate sympathies. His nearest neighbor was a Confederate in feeling, and his two sons were fighting under Lee. This neighbor’s wife was a Union woman and it nearly broke her heart to know that her sons were arrayed against the Union.”
“Finally, the two men, after each the matter over with his wife, agreed to obtain divorces; this they did, and the Union man and Union woman were wedded, as were the Confederate man and the Confederate woman–the men swapped wives, in short.”
“But this didn’t seem to help matters any, for the sons of the Union woman were still fighting for the South, and the sons of the Confederate woman continued in the Federal Army; the Union husband couldn’t get along with his Union wife, and the Confederate husband and his Confederate wife couldn’t agree upon anything, being forever fussing and quarreling.”
“It’s the same thing with the Army. It doesn’t seem worth while to secure divorces and then marry the Army and McClellan to others, for they won’t get along any better than they do now, and there’ll only be a new set of heartaches started.”
Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, War Years, Volume I, p. 548-49.