Born in 1907, Irene Hunt lived in southern Illinois for most of her life. A number of her ancestors had lived in the region during the Civil War. Her grandfather, who was nine years old when the war began, told her many vivid stories about his childhood during this period. These stories, along with old family letters and records, provided part of the inspiration for her 1964 novel, Across Five Aprils. Its plot focuses on the experiences of one southern Illinois family during the Civil War. Though the story takes place in the 1860s, there are a number of similarities between its events and those that occurred in the 1960s, when the book was written.
Southern Illinois and its ties to the South. In 1861 Illinois was inhabited primarily by farm families such as the Creightons of Across Five Aprils. Illinois was one of the nation's "free" states, which meant that slavery was prohibited there. Even so, significant numbers of Illinois residents shared the racist attitudes held by many of their slaveholding neighbors to the south. State policy reflected these racist attitudes.
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