Building on the theme of the importance of the family, L'Amour tries to show that the caring of a family can spread outward to the community.
When little Susan Atherton's mother, for example, is captured by rebel slave traders, the Travens take Susan with them and leave her in the care of their neighbor Maddy Wyatt who lovingly welcomes the girl.
Another important theme, a natural to a Civil War story, is slavery. Although L'Amour does not explore to the moral depths possible the irony of white slavery after the emancipation by the whites of black slaves, he does take the opportunity to give the history of the word slave (early Roman slaves coming from Slavic countries), to explain that whites as well as blacks have been slaves, and to condemn those who have.....
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