Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
June 1956 | Volume 7, Issue 4
Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
June 1956 | Volume 7, Issue 4
Very few facts of any real consequence still remain to be dug up about the American Civil War. History’s secrets have been largely disclosed. We know about that war just about as much as our grandchildren will know, and the area of our knowledge today is not very much broader than it was a generation ago. Most of the returns are in, and they have long since been tabulated and analyzed. Yet books about the war continue to be written, and since both authors and publishers work, very largely, in response to economic motivations, this can only mean that the American people still want to read such books. They want them, indeed, in a greater volume than at any time within living memory, and there is every indication that this desire will remain strong for a number of years to come. Which leads to the interesting question why . It is easy enough to come up with stock answers—that this war was a prodigious experience, that almost everyone in America had a part in it, that our racial memory remains fascinated by the infinite drama and pathos of “the war between brothers,” and that in this present era of uncertainty and doubt people look back to the supreme moment of national crisis to see how we managed to get through it and what lessons it may offer for people who have to live in the modern world. Yet all of those answers taken together are not quite enough. They are perfectly correct, but when they are added together something essential is lacking. The Civil War story has been there all along, its salient facts all taped and docketed, and the diligent students who have plowed the field so thoroughly have left very little room for important new discoveries. The current spate of interest in the war certainly does not depend on the writers’ ability to come up with hithero undiscovered data; most emphatically, it does not mean that the American public has abruptly developed a fondness for reading an unending rehash of an old familiar story. What is going on now, clearly, is a deep and frequently moving examination of the emotional significance of this most profound of all our national experiences. It is probable that we are not yet wholly rational beings. We approach true understanding through our emotions rather than through our intellects, deplorable as that may be, and although we know about all we need to know about the facts of the war we are still feeling our way toward a comprehension of what those facts mean. For above and beyond everything else, the Civil War was a matter of the emotions. It came about because men’s emotions ran away with them; it was borne, North and South, for four mortal years because those emotions remained strong; and its final significance, nowadays, is often more a matter for