In contrast to the "objective" architecture of the archive, the "subjective" drama of life in the two counties springs forth in all color and vibrancy.   In the diary of Michael Reid Hanger, "Rockbridge Rifles, Company H, 4th and 5th Virginia, Infantry," the soldier reports: "We saw some of the enemy, in red caps and blue uniforms. I shot at one of them, and all say I certainly killed him."


 

A  slave narrative reports: 

 "Yes they were good when you could work but when you got sick they sold you.

 "I had an aunt took fever in war time--left her feeble-minded.   She wandered off sometimes.  They sold her. they knew at big house traders was coming--kept it from her.  Answer was, when they broke news to her she said, she just as soon belomg to one white man as another.  Tole us all good by like she was going on a visit.   We never saw her no more."   

Note that this drawing presents and example of oscillation between rhetoric and philosophy.   The clothes of the man, the white suit, bow-tie, hat, mimics the rhetoric of the landed aristocracy.  The substantive truth of the his condition is slavery, as apparent by his color.  A simultaneous oscillation occurs between the man in the foreground and his family in the window behind.