Reflections on the Civil War

A few weeks ago while Kathi and I were back in Dayton visiting family, we had a chance to dig through some family records left by my grandmother. In those records we discovered an ancestor of mine who had fought in the Civil War with the 5th Ohio Calvary. Now I'm no Civil War buff (how do you become a buff, anyway?), but this piqued an interested in the history of it all. Back when I was in college, I bought James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, and I had never read it. So, I decided to pick up and read this 800-page behemoth.

Wow! It was an amazing read. The book didn't just focus on the battles and the military personalities. It really put you right there in the midst of what was going on in society at that time. I actually felt the tension and the angst that was so a part of antebellum America. He wrote with such a narrative style that you felt like you were reading a story, being caught up with all of the twists and turns.

If we think that our country today is divisive and broken, we got nothing on America in the 1850s and 60s. During the time leading up to Fort Sumter, fist fights regular broke out during sessions of Congress. During one infamous incident, a southern Congressman sensing an insult on his family honor, beat a northern abolitionist within an inch of his life with a cane. Now that's politics! That's what we need today - Congressional beatings.