"Solon, you're 68 years old! I'll be danged if you go traipsing off to that god-forsaken place. Besides it ain't nothing but another rich man's war. It's sugar this time. The 'power brokers' are at it again, lusting for more. Last time it was cotton and before that Indian Land. Next it'll be something - what? Hell, maybe oil. How in tarnation can some folk throw away lives on such greedy foolishness? I'll never know!" Lou was as mad outwardly as she had been in a mighty long time. She got up her steam again. "You, Solon, have preached about the folly - madness of war since forever. This Spanish mess is surely folly. Mr. and Mrs. Bryan are active in the Anti-Imperialist League. They know. They know, Solon. Mark Twain has even spoken all over about the sham of our country becoming an empire. McKinley is making some headway with those Spaniards to make things right for the Cubans. No, no, Solon, please."
Solon sat in the swing hanging from the fifty-foot ash tree on the backside of their house. Lou was beside him. They had been taking in the April weather as the sun set over towards Bryson. When Solon told her of his intentions to go to Chickamauga to get the general to take him as a chaplain to Cuba, Lou had stomped both her feet down on the worn un-grassed spot under the swing bringing the gentle swinging and their pleasant time to a violent halt. Her eyes flashed on the side of his face. He looked forward, frozen with his mouth fixed and his eyes staring out across the barn to the pale orange and robin-shell blue sunset. He kept his silence for a few moments allowing Lou's anger to hang in the gracious spring air. Energy spent is weakened energy, he knew.
"I suppose so Lou, but. . . well, I'm going. You've read, like me, about those crimes that tyrant Weyler and his Spanish lords have visited on those poor people. Concentration camps, Lou. . . Whole towns, thousand of people rounded up and moved away to fenced in 'stock pens'. Lou, Jackson, Van Buren and Scott did that to your Cherokees! Your "trash southern aristocracy" did it to the coloreds! The Cubans been fighting for thirty years - all colors, all sorts - to rid themselves of the Dons. I showed you the newspaper articles. Now its time to do something. Yes, McKinley will have to do something but it can only be by force."
"Lou, the general has been outspoken in his respect of that Jose` Marti and his struggle down there. He was with him just a few weeks ago in New York." Solon's words had taken on an unhurried, reasoned and steady tone. "The current Universalist Leader says it's our duty to liberate the Cubans from the atrocities of Spanish misrule." Lou's gaze stayed fixed, her defense was formidable. Solon continued after checking her eyes to see if there was an opening head on. There wasn't. He tried the flank.