i’ve just been on the royal tour.

Today’s entry is a trip through the ages, along the path of Westward Expansion, to the homes of three Great Americans.  Their lives are extraordinary, but they are also illustrative of some critically important trends and broader patterns in the last three centuries of American life.  I know what you are thinking: “Ugh, sounds pretty boring.  If it’s this or scanning Groupon, well…”

But wait.  Like most history lessons, the material is potentially fascinating and potentially dull.  We will both have to see how this one turns out.  The fact is, I haven’t written it yet.  The final judgment I shall leave to you.

Let’s begin our tour in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Why Philly, other than the fact that it’s the greatest city in the world, nay, the Universe?  We begin there because not all that long ago, Philadelphia was also the capital of the United States, as it still should be.  Which leads me to…

Scene One:

In which Thomas Jefferson invites his homeboy Madison and his archrival, Alexander Hamilton, to what we would call a working dinner.  Fine wine flowed like a mighty stream, and the bewigged men of genius cut a deal to end what had been a seemingly intractable political argument about the nation’s debt crisis.  Some things never change, I suppose.  To make a long story short, the commerce-centric, bank-supporting, city dwelling types succeeded in their efforts to turn the various state debts into one big national debt that would be the responsibility of the Federal government to pay off.  This would require a collective effort and help to bind the early Republic together and avoid Civil War (for now). 

And what of the farming, anti-Central Government, wary-of-Cities-and-Business men like Thomas Jefferson?  They got their prize too: the capital of the United States would be moved away from the corruption and urbanity of the Northeast, and rebuilt from scratch, by human slaves, in the swampy, Southern, malarial paradise of Maryland-Virginia.  When Civil War broke out a century later, Washington, D.C.’s location, surrounded by slave states, would become a serious issue, and would lead President Lincoln to suspend Habeas Corpus and institute Martial Law in Maryland to ensure it would not secede.  Its proximity to Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia nearly cost “us” the war, twice.  But at least D.C. remains and always has been free of corruption and undue influence from moneyed interests.  Oh wait…

Back to our tour, though.  The first real stop is about one hundred miles to the South and West of Washington, on a hilltop near Charlottesville, Virginia.  There sits house #1: “Monticello.”  Home, and final resting place, of Thomas Jefferson.  Monticello, meaning “little mountain,” is one of the most famous homes in America, and probably one of the most beautiful.  It is a reflection of the man who lived there, not surprisingly, since he was its architect and overseer.  I don’t think it would be hyperbole to say that Monticello is basically a portrait of Thomas Jefferson in red brick and white columns.  It demonstrates his European leanings and time spent in the more elegant Old World.  It physically realizes his interests in science, botany, and education.  It is filled with his many inventions and his thousands of books, which he could read and translate into at least six languages.  His house was also built and maintained by African slaves, one of whom would become his mistress and the father of six of his children (after the death of his wealthy White wife, Martha).

We won’t stay long at Monticello, but not for lack of interesting history-ness.  Our man T.J. was a tour-de-force, a one-in-a-million specimen of human potential, but he was also an excellent symbol of his era and his hugely important class (a dirty word in most history courses).  When Southerners look back at the days before the Civil War, when things were supposedly so fine and dandy, they see someone quite like Jefferson.  Indeed, life for a Southern planter was pretty genteel.  Imagine if you and all of your friends lived in lavish mansions, without a “job” to speak of.  Imagine yourself: strolling daily in manicured gardens, in fine fashions, discussing philosophy or trading violin concertos.  Gourmet food for you, and your guests, is delivered to your table three times per day.  Your children’s education: the finest in the word.  Tomorrow, six white horses will guide your gleaming, velvet-lined carriage to a similar plantation in a nearby county.  A friend there has expressed interest in arranging a marriage for your eldest son, and is offering five hundred acres of prime farmland in addition to his daughter’s hand.  You deliberate.  One thousand acres would be better.

Not bad, right?  There’s a reason that Jefferson and Co. saw their world as a New Rome, and they, the rightful Senators and Caesars.  As in Rome, though, few people enjoyed this lifestyle.  Nearly all were poor, and many were enslaved.  For this vast majority, the post-War south would be better.  For the descendents of Jefferson, perhaps we can see why they fought so fiercely to protect their “blessed way-of-life.”  And what of Sally Hemings and her six mixed-race children?

I was curious as to how the guide at Monticello would approach the issue, since we now have DNA evidence that Jefferson was indeed the father of her kids (and the great-great-great…grandfather of her still-kicking scions).  The (white) guide admitted as much when asked a direct question, but moved onto less controversial ground as soon as possible.  Good enough, I decided.  It’s probably not their favorite point of discussion.  Personally, I like the Jefferson-Hemings story because it’s good, rich history: we learn that even the great Thomas Jefferson was creeping on his comely female “property.”  Should we be surprised that a great many, perhaps most, slave owners did the same?  Are the men of today that much more civilized?  If women could not bring charges against men in court, nor testify in that court if they were allowed to sue, what do you think would be the result?  What if every jury in such a court was filled exclusively with male friends of the accused with a vested interest in continuing the system of all-you-can-rape?  Well…

Jefferson would be acquitted, of course, but in this case, it seems that he arguably is innocent.  His relationship with Sally was much more complicated than it appears at first glance.  He became involved with her only after the death of his wife.  Sally (who happened to be three quarters white, and happened to be Martha Jefferson’s half-sister) was charming, beautiful, and educated.  He was brilliant, powerful, and rich.  They lived together in Europe when he was ambassador to France.  Their children, 7/8^ths white but still legally enslaved, were given their freedom, some before, and some after, his death.  It is impossible to prove, but my impression is that they genuinely loved each other, and lived secretly and unofficially as husband and wife for many years.  Let me be clear: the system of slavery is an indefensible evil.  Perhaps no legitimate relationship is possible between “master” and “slave,” period.  But not everything in T.J.’s Virginia was black and white, so to speak.  Real life plays out in shades of grey.

House #2:  The Hermitage – Nashville, Tennessee.

We’re moving West, and graduating from Jefferson’s 18^th century to Andrew Jackson’s early 19^th.  The road from Charlottesville to Nashville, in our case, stops in the Piedmont Region (in the near-Appalachians, to the West of the richer, older Coastal regions filled with plantations like T.J.’s) of the Carolina colonies in the midst of the American Revolution.  Here we find young Andrew Jackson, perhaps the best teaching tool/man-of-his-times in all of American history.  Unlike Jefferson, his family has only recently emigrated from Europe.  He is Scots-Irish, but was born and raised an American.  His America, likewise, is a mix of long-standing English influence, newer immigrant culture, and the adopted wisdom of displaced Native Americans.  His father died in an accident a few weeks before he was born, so the Jacksons of the Carolina wilds number only four: his mother, two brothers, and himself.  Which brings us to… 

Scene Two:

In which the Jacksons join the war effort against the British (not a tough sell for the average Scots-Irish clan).  Jackson’s eldest brother dies in battle in the summer of 1779, of heatstroke.  Having just driven through the South, in the dead of summer, I’m surprised only that this did not happen much more often.  Jackson’s mother volunteers to nurse the Patriot wounded amidst an outbreak of cholera; she contracts the disease and dies soon thereafter.  Robert Jackson, his middle brother, contracts smallpox as a prisoner-of-war.  He dies.  Andrew Jackson, aged thirteen, is a courier in the service of the Continental Army, running dispatches through the backwoods he knows so intimately.  Jackson is captured by the British and ordered to clean the boots of a young officer named Major Coffin.  He refuses.  Coffin slashes Andrew Jackson with his sword, leaving a scar across his head and left hand.  Big mistake, as it turns out.  Jackson, now orphaned and alone in the world, bears his scars, and hatred for the British, to the end of his days.  He’ll get his revenge.  Little boys grow up, after all. 

And grow up he did, into the most Badass President of All Time.  Also: best hair.  He was a polarizing figure, and a walking contradiction.  By the time his name was known in the taverns and halls of the young United States, Jackson was an “urbane savage,” a rough and tumble frontier kid grown rich through law (which he taught himself) and cotton planting, dressed in silk and satin.  He was a “Democratic autocrat,” committed to the idea that everyone, meaning all white males, not just the Jefferson-types, should be allowed to vote and shape public policy.  Mostly, he thought they should vote for him, and when they did, that he should be allowed to set policy for them, mostly on his own.  He was an “atrocious saint,” expanding the territory of the United States through brutal Indian Wars, and preventing Civil War (for now) when South Carolina started acting a fool in 1832. 

In any case, he was a tough motherfucker, having been shot so many times in pistol duels that it was said he “rattled like a bag of marbles.”  When a deranged Englishman tried to assassinate Jackson in 1835, the President had to be restrained by his friends so as to protect the assassin from the furious blows of Jackson’s walking cane.  A generation earlier, then-General Jackson had defeated the British at New Orleans in the War of 1812, routing the Redcoat Regulars with a motley crew of Militiamen, Native American allies, and free blacks.  Jackson was outnumbered nearly 3:1.  British Casualties: 2,100 and change.  American Casualties: 71.   “Old Hickory,” indeed.  Glory, and Tennessee, were his.

Ah, Tennessee.  Surely one of the finest of our fifty states. I think I should like to write a book about it someday.  For now, picture the twentysomething Andrew Jackson moving West from Carolina to the dusty frontier outpost of Nashville on the Cumberland River.  His path through the mountains, the Cumberland Gap, was created by a well-placed meteor strike at the convergence of what is today Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.  It is the same path taken by Daniel Boone, and hundreds of thousands of migrants, seeking opportunity and a better life in the South and West.  It is a process that continues to this day, for the same reasons: overcrowding in Northern and Eastern cities, lower living costs in the trans-Mississippi, a chance to own one’s own land—to be independent, free of the landlord and the line boss, etc.  Anyway, Jackson arrives, sets up shop, and makes it.  American Dream and all that.

Now a success, Jackson buys land on the edge of town and builds his castle.  Like Monticello, and the yet-unmentioned House #3, it’s relatively modest by our current standards.  Spacious and handsome, yes, but not showoff-enormous.  The Hermitage, as he called it, is but a shack when compared to the true castles of America, The Biltmore Estate for example, or fiddy's crib.  It also has a lot to say about the man who built it.  The Hermitage, viewed from the front, is a tan colored, Greek Revival mansion.  It’s a façade, though.  From the sides and rear, it’s a sturdy red-brick Big House: the heart and soul of the 1000 acre cotton plantation on which it rests.  In its time, it was probably the finest home between the Appalachians and the Pacific; the Indians and Spanish had more modest tastes, for the most part.  It was also a self-sufficient fortress.  Guests flocked to Jackson’s house from hundreds of miles away; there, they were safe from Indian attacks.  There, they could enjoy a rest from the road, heady conversation, good whiskey, and, if the beds were occupied, a sack of hay on which to sleep (hence the expressions: “hit the sack” and “hit the hay”).  See, you is learning!

Enough Jackson, I think.  But before we move West, and into the 20^th century, some credit is due to the modern day keepers of the Hermitage (now air-conditioned!)  In my walking tour, as one might expect, up came the issue of slavery.  This is always an awkward moment, especially when the tour guide looks mostly at, or motions to, the one or two African Americans on the tour full of white folks when answering these questions.  “Was Jackson a ‘good’ master or a ‘bad’ master to his many slaves?”  Now, as it turns out, the tour guide would have had a pretty good case for Jackson’s defense.  Among his slaves, infant mortality was low, and life expectancy was high.  Overwork, hunger, and physical brutality were rare at the Hermitage.  Clearly, if one were enslaved, this would be a relatively pleasant place to work/live.  That wasn’t her answer.  The audio-guide explained that there was no such thing as a “good” slave owner.  Human slavery was, is, and always will be wrong.  Jackson might be heroic in other ways, but he does not get a pass on his stance on slavery, nor Indian removal.  And this from the folks who are paid to spread the word about his life and times.  Points for honesty, and bravery.  No time for bullshit.  Andrew Jackson would approve.

House #3: Graceland  —  Memphis, Tennessee. 

Enter the King.  Two hundred miles to the West and South, and a century later, we arrive at our final destination.  The Civil War has come and gone, though the “father of waters” remains at the heart of life in the Mississsippi Delta.  Cotton floats South toward New Orleans.  Blues and Barbeque steam northward.  Then, as in Jackson’s time, as now, Memphis is predominantly African American.  It’s also poor, and the setting of…

Scene three:

In which a shy, penniless, mama’s boy sneaks off to Beale Street, downtown.  He’s white, and “trashy,” according to his schoolmates.  School isn’t really his thing, though he loves music class.  He can’t afford records.   Radio broadcasts, though, they’re free.  Beale street means blues clubs: gospel songs, rhythm and blues, flashy clothes in storefront windows.  When he can afford it, he frequents the clubs, studying the bluesmen.  Memphis belles shriek and shimmy.  He’s a Christian, but he ain’t no saint.  He’s soaks it up.  Tomorrow, the clubs will be open to coloreds only.  He dreams that someday, the voice on the radio might be his.

It would be, of course.  That poor white boy, Elvis Presley, would go on to sell a BILLION records.  He brought Beale Street to Main Street; soon, white kids the world over would be copying him.  His clothes and moves and music, “borrowed” from the descendents of America’s former slaves, became cool.  Not for the last time, white kids copped black language and black culture, much to their straight-laced parents’ chagrin.  Lennon, McCartney, Richards and Jagger dreamed they might be like him.  Later, newer bands looked to the Beatles and Stones for inspiration.  And so on.

But I digress.  The King of Rock and Roll, more famous and more successful—though not better—than his African American heroes could hope to be, would need a castle of his own.  His parents found it for him, just outside of Memphis, on what is today Elvis Presley Boulevard.  For the newly rich Elvis, the house was a dream come true.  Again, not enormous, but private, stately, and symbolic of his success.  Like Jefferson and Jackson, the décor in his castle was carefully selected.  Apparently, though, times had changed.

Elvis’s house, the famous Graceland, is a study in New Rich Tackiness.  Every surface in the building is either white, gold, or mirrored, and sometimes all three.  Stained glass peacocks grace the formal living room.  His living room: gauche-resplendent.  Green shag carpet on the floors AND ceiling.   Massive carved wood tiki bar.  Still, the in-room waterfall trickles and shimmers in yellow spotlight.  Visitors aren’t allowed upstairs, as was true even when the King himself held court there in the 60s and 70s.  Not much has changed since then, so the house is just as interesting as a timewarp to what must have been the low point in American interior design as it is a way to better know Elvis.  I enjoyed seeing the piano on which he played his final two songs on the day he died (on his throne, no less).  I liked his “meditation garden:” a fountain, surrounded by benches and a low wall adorned with famous bible scenes.  It is there that the King rests today, flanked by his grandma, and his mom and dad.  I really like Elvis, and paid respects, but I still felt like a fraud.  The people there, they love Elvis.  As was true for millions of Americans, and millions beyond, Elvis was significant in their lives.  I was just passing through town.

And pass through I did, toward Clarksdale, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans.  Before we move on for good, though, let’s put our man E.P. in context.  Interesting that our 20^th century figure was not famous for war or politics, but for entertainment.  Elvis’s place in the history books, his symbolic importance, is the result of his fame.  The story of Elvis is the story of television, and “motion pictures.”  His success was not the product of education, iron will, brilliance, or tireless effort; it was the product of his talent, good looks, and unbridled sexuality.  He was an overnight celebrity, and a tabloid fixture.  As such, he remains a fitting man-of-the-times, as were his fellow Americans Jefferson and Jackson.  His appeal was more superficial, though.  This too is fitting, as the trend toward the superficial continues in our own century.  Elvis had a hell of a talent, at least.  By God, that white boy could sing. 

And so concludes our royal tour.  Lots of reading, I know, but think of the money you saved on admission and travel costs.  Think of the non-renewable energy you did not consume.  Feel free to send the difference along to the author in the form of iTunes credits or Yuengling 12-packs.  You know, whenever you get a chance.

I hope you have enjoyed the ride, as it has been my pleasure to lead you.  I’ll see you all again next time.  Till then, my friends, farewell.

My guess is that you will never set foot in the town of Crossville, Tennessee.  I wouldn’t call it remote, per se, but it isn’t someplace that you would find by accident.  Until relatively recently, there wasn’t much reason for anyone not from Crossville to be in Crossville, to tell you the truth.  And if you are there, all in town know the reason why. 

You are here to see the treehouse.  I’ve seen it, experienced it.  I even met the man who built it.  He’s the hero of our story today.  His name is Horace Burgess. 

Horace Burgess’s treehouse has been under construction for nearly twenty years, and it is not yet complete.  It contains over 258,000 nails.  It’s not your average treehouse.  In fact, it is the largest treehouse on God’s green earth: 10 stories high, 8,000+ square feet, and spanning seven massive oak trees in the old growth forests of East Central Tennessee.  There is a belfry on top, approximately 100 feet from ground level.  It’s quite a climb.  I rang a bell.  It’s also not easy to find one’s way to the top, mostly because the thing never had a blueprint.  Instead, Burgess just kept adding rooms and levels as the years went on.

There was a plan, though.  A plan, and a vision.

You see, back in ’93, Horace Burgess had a vision while at prayer.  As the story goes, Burgess was just starting his treehouse project when he began to run out of lumber.  Then, God offered him a deal: build me a treehouse (with some specific requirements: large sanctuary, with basketball hoop) and I will provide the materials.  Well, the rest, as they say, is history. 

“I built it for everybody,” Burgess explains.  “It's God's treehouse. He keeps watch over it.”  I hope so.  Burgess is usually busy with his day job as a landscaper.  Guests are often there without him.  Young children on narrow beams or leaning over low rails.  Teenagers drinking and partying at night.  One stranger moved into the treehouse, where he lived for three years.  After he died, Burgess scattered the man’s ashes at the base and summit of his divinely inspired creation. 

People being people, Burgess has had to deal with a lot of man-on-tree violence over the years.  Seemingly every inch of exposed tree and wooden plank is now covered in graffiti—lots of blank was here, blank & blank forever.  Lots of “God loves you” and “Jesus is lord.”  Guests have smashed windows, though, and thrown furniture from even the highest balconies.  Burgess is almost infinitely forgiving, but he has wizened up a bit: there’s now a Watcher of the Tree to keep things under control.

I met the Watcher.  She is what the snootiest of Yankees thinks of when they picture someone from the middle of Tennessee: unwashed, jean shorts with NASCAR/Toby Keith t-shirt, cigarette dangling precariously from her lips, dentally challenged, etc.  She took the picture of Burgess and me, never speaking a word or removing the cigarette.  Her relationship to Burgess is not clear, though she seems to live on the property, facing the treehouse, in what appeared to be a miniature replica of a teepee.  Not good enough, according to Burgess.  He was there to work on her “new place.” 

“I’m buildin’ what you might call a redneck livin’ room.  She gets too hot in there durin’ the day, and can’t see too good at niyyyyyt.”  For the record, a redneck living room is basically a porch without a house: four posts, with a roof on top.  Under the roof/observation deck is a screened in hangout.  Pretty clever actually.  I wish teepee-woman many happy years there.

Because the story is just so good, you may doubt my sincerity; you should not doubt his.  Nor do I suggest you write off Burgess as a kook.  In our conversation, he was engaging and sharp.  He seemed kind and selfless.  He is a true believer.  He’s also a powerful symbol of the religiosity of the American South.

Ah, the South.  The most religious part of a very religious country.  One cannot understand America without an understanding of its sometimes fanatical devotion to Jesus.  Even in the secular humanist big cities, one finds a Holy Bible in every hotel room, just in case.  Our radio waves hum with sermons on every conceivable topic.  It makes Europeans nervous, which, for the faithful, confirms that they are on the side of right.

I imagine Jesus would be surprised to see how things worked out.  Perhaps we lose sight of the fact that it is a little strange that America and Christianity are so associated.  Americans might even think of Christianity as a highly American religion.  It isn’t.  People think of Jesus as a white man in sandals.  As a Christian.  He wasn’t.  Jesus was a Jewish agitator, an anti-Church revolutionary.  He was a middle easterner, of course, and a proto-Socialist, and probably looked more like a Seattle-band Jeff Goldblum than the angelic figure gazing down from millions of American living rooms.  I imagine he would frown upon the killing of Abortion clinic workers.  Probably, he would be pro-Healthcare reform.  I wonder how his followers would react if he returned and weighed in on these issues.  But I digress.

America has wrestled with its faith, and the effect that faith should play in public policy, since the days of Thomas Jefferson.  I am not here to comment on that debate, nor am I here to celebrate or vilify either side.  What I hope to do is remind you, dear reader, of the significance of faith in our national story.  Christianity was the driving force behind abolitionism.  It was also the justification for chattel slavery.  Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson would not have achieved their greatness without a deep and personal faith.  Abraham Lincoln, likewise, could not have saved the Union without it.  President Obama serves the public interest with his Christian faith as a guiding light, as did Martin Luther King.  As did George W. Bush.

Which brings us back to Crossville (note: in the South, “ville” rhymes with “full.”  It does not rhyme with “drill”) and Horace Burgess.  What are we to make of this preacher-carpenter-visionary?  What of the millions who would read his story and accept readily the truth of his personal connection with the Almighty?  Personally, I try not to judge lest I be judged.  I’m about the big picture.  And the big picture, to me, looks this way:

Horace Burgess has a purpose in this life.  He built something truly extraordinary, unique in the world, which brings happiness to children and all who are young-at-heart.  His work brings people together.  No one is turned away.  Admission is free, and his welcome is genuine.  Fortune and fame elude him, about which he seems perfectly content.  His community may not always appreciate the tourists, but they too benefit from his life’s work.  It’s hard to see how the world would not be better off if it had a few more folks like Horace Burgess.  It’s even harder to see how he, and others like him, would be better off without their “superstition.”

Driving through America’s hamlets, one notices churches everywhere.  I’m not sure I’ve seen a town without one.  I’m glad I haven’t.  America’s churches are often its community centers, even today.  Secularists may roll their eyes, but human beings are no less in need of spiritual guidance today than they were in the time of Jesus.  In fact, they are probably more in need of such guidance.  If they find it in church, or synagogue, or the mosque, more power to them.  And the sermons.  Sometimes I listen to the sermons on my car stereo.  I’d tell you its because I don’t feel like picking out a new album to listen to, or because I find it amusing in some smirking-Hipster way, but I would be lying.  I find them interesting because they are new to me, and interesting.  I love the fire and brimstone.  And while I don’t always agree with the message, I appreciate the chance to think it over, to wrestle with the issues therein.  This is an academic, brain-stretching pastime.  Those who listen, benefit, I think.  It is a long respected form of education.  It’s a blessing, you could say.

And now, it’s time to go.  Vicksburg awaits.  But before I sign off, consider this:  In the garden below Burgess’s treehouse, is spelled, in ten-foot-tall letters, the word JESUS.  By my calculation, somewhere in the vicinity of 500,000 people have visited Crossville since Burgess made his pact with the big guy.  Why the religio-billboard? 

“When you see Jesus in the garden, the preacher don’t have to preach,” he says.  His eyes twinkle.  Smart guy, that Horace Burgess.

God bless him.

The following is adapted from a lecture originally delivered to my 11th grade U.S. History students in February of this year.  And as we know, a lecture is a terrible thing to waste.  Plus it took me a helluva long time to put together, all things considered.  I hope you will enjoy it...

           One hundred and fifty years have passed since the outbreak of the Civil War in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.  Since that day in April, 1861, more than 65,000 books have been published on the subject of the American Civil War.  Sixty Five Thousand.  For my fellow non-math people, that figure amounts to an average of more than one civil war book published per day, every day, for the last one hundred and fifty years.

            Expatriate poet Gertrude Stein, living in Paris during the conflict, later wrote that “There will never be anything more interesting than that American Civil War.”  Really?  “There will never be anything more interesting?”  Perhaps she overstated her case, but even if so, her comment is illustrative of the hold on the American and International imagination engendered by the so-called “War Between the States.”  The first question for us, fledgling historians and historiographers, is surely: “Why?”  Why is this war so interesting?  Why is it different from the countless other wars that distinguish, or defile, human history?  What could possibly be so interesting as to warrant 65,000 volumes in response?  Let’s take a look.

            As Americans, our obsession might be forgiven on the grounds that Civil Wars are inherently more destructive, more deeply scarring to the national psyche than any other sort of armed conflict.  It is one thing to sacrifice blood and treasure in an effort to win independence from a foreign power, or to defend—at great cost—one’s nation against Nazi or Soviet aggression.  It is quite another to make war upon one’s own land.  Against one’s own people.  The fact that American families saw brother take up arms against brother, and fathers against sons, has become clouded by cliché.  But the tragedy of that fact has not diminished with time.  The wound inflicted upon our country by the deaths of 620,000 American men and boys, the proportional equivalent of 6,000,000 dead today, has yet to heal.  For those whose family members were killed, or horribly maimed by so-called “Yankees” or so-called “Rebels,” the Christian maxim of “forgive and forget” was a tall order indeed.

             There have been many other Civil Wars, though.  What is it about ours that so captivates, so confounds the imagination?  Perhaps it’s the sheer scale of the conflict.  For more than four years, armies of men, former artists and teachers, ministers and members of Congress, fishermen and farmers slaughtered each other by the tens of thousands.  Our armies were not the biggest in history, though.  Our number of casualties, nearly 2 million, pales in comparison with some wars before and some since.  Unlike most wars, however, the Civil War was not waged out of a desire for more territory, or for revenge.  It was not fought in the name of religion or economic security.  Our Civil War was, in many ways, a conflict of ideas.  Central Government vs. Local Control.  Republic vs. Confederacy.  And eventually, Freedom vs. Slavery.  As the world watched men fight and die in the attempt to emancipate their countrymen from bondage, to at last wash away their country’s original sin with their own sweat and blood, it took note.  This was no ordinary war.

            As we look back, it is clear that the Civil War and post-war period known as Reconstruction, it’s clear that these events were, and remain, the defining moments in our history.  If our national house was wobbling in the 19^th century, divided against itself, it is only because we built it on a shifting and highly unstable foundation.  The question of slavery, and the separate question of states’ rights vs. federal power, had bedeviled the republic since before it had come to exist.  These questions, heretofore unresolved by the finest minds America had produced, their answers delayed by compromise and half-measures, would be answered once and for all on battlefields from New Mexico to Pennsylvania.  Or would they?

            To be sure, one cannot possibly understand America, past, present, or future, without an understanding of the events of those seminal years.  Without such context, we will fail to appreciate the significance of our African-American President, and we will never understand the level of political opposition that currently stands against him.  Without a grasp of reconstruction, we cannot understand Martin Luther King, nor Malcolm X.  Rosa Parks, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, Jackie Robinson, or Jay-Z.  The country we live in today, the City, the school in which you sit, these are the products of our great and terrible Civil War.

Now, you may believe that I am exaggerating for effect.  After all, if a United States history teacher is not permitted to wax eloquent on the subject of the Civil War, when for heaven’s sake, is he or she granted that right?  But, in this case, you would be mistaken.  In many ways, when we look at the American men and women of the age, at their country and their way of life, we see, for the first time, a mirror image of ourselves.  Not a perfect mirror image, perhaps, but at least a reflection that we might recognize without undue squinting.  George Washington may as well have lived and fought alongside Caesar, but the soldiers and sailors under Grant and Lee, and the families back home awaiting their return, lived and died in our America.

But Mr. Rosen, you may be thinking, the Civil War was a very long time ago.  Back then, battles ended when the sun went down.  Cavalry officers still swung swords; their means of transportation did not burn fuel but eat hay.  True enough.  But their world, if not fully modern, was rapidly changing.  By the end of the war, Federals and Confederates killed one another with steam powered, ironclad ships.  They fought in submarines.  They spied on each other’s armies with hot air balloons, and threw grenades into each other’s trenches.  New Yorkers sent to invade Virginia arrived by train, at speeds human beings had only yet dreamed of.  By the end of the war, men mowed each other down with a useful new weapon we would call a machine gun.  By the end of the war, though, wounded soldiers could enter a field hospital expecting sterile bandages, anesthesia, and letters from home to read while they recovered.  If our armies began the war with tactics learned from Napoleon, the surrender at Appomattox interrupted a war in Virginia that looked much more like World War I.  Remember I told you that the rest of the world was paying close attention to the events in the Divided States of America.  They learned well the lessons of how modern armies might wage war.

Thankfully, it was not only in the realm of weapons and tactics that we can see our America begin to emerge.  Gone were the days of America as a collection of far-flung communities, bound together only for survival and basic commerce.  People outside of America’s booming cities were connected to those places, and to each other, by telegraph line and railroad track.  When the Union lost a battle, or won, Europeans heard about it in a matter of hours, rather than days or weeks.  When a woman in San Francisco picked up a newspaper to find out about the developments in Atlanta, she saw photographs of the battlefield dead.  For the first time, Americans could see what their heroes and villains looked like.  Not an artist’s rendering in charcoal or oil, but the person.  One could look into Grant’s eyes.  Or Lincoln’s.  Or John Wilkes Booth’s. 

Perhaps most importantly, we see ourselves in the mirror because the country on the other side, having survived its trial by fire, began to see itself as a permanent fixture on the world stage. The United States would not only survive, but would soon take its place as a true World Power.  Within a century of our near-fatal national crisis, we would emerge as the most powerful country in the history of the World.  After the Civil War, we knew our “experiment” in Republican government was going to succeed.  The better angels of our nature proved stronger than the passions that had so strained the bonds between North and South, between black and white.  The America of 2011 is free of human slavery, even if it struggles to live up to the promise that all men might be equal, that they all might be guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  In the America of 1865, that statement was no less true than now.

It is to that America, the not yet reconstructed America, to which we will turn next time.