Maryland, My Maryland — Gerald Duff

In Maryland, My Maryland (a selection from the short story collection Fire Ants and Other Stories by Gerald Duff), on the way to the Antietam, MD battleground in 1862, a common soldier in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia is one of three from the same plantation in Mississippi -- the son and heir of the Sutcliffe holdings, Major Jeremy; one self-educated slave Catullus; and the speaker in the narrative, Willie Magee, son of the overseer of the plantation. Matters of race, intellect, war, and love are entangled beyond solving as the battle rages.