Rifles for Watie

Jefferson David Bussey was living on a farm in Linn County, Kansas when Watie men came to raid his farm. His family put up a fight and the Watie men eventually took off when men from neighboring farms came to help, but they gave Jeff a hit from a gun barrel that he would remember that rendered him unconscious. He was so angry about the raiding Watie men that he went and joined the Union army. The army was not what he thought it would be, which was all splendor, glory and victory. The army was actually hard work with lots of bugs, hunger, sickness, and death. He doesn’t think that the Union army is in the right, they raid the south’s farms which shocked him and they did not show mercy to any of the spies they found. Jeff refuses to the spies, landing him in trouble. As the years drag by, Jeff is praying this war will end soon.

This book definitely has some violence, because it does take place in the civil war.