A House Divided

Sorry, no topical post-election post here. As mentioned in an earlier entry, Cas and I moved from a review of the Nation's birth to its make-or-break hour: the Civil War. Via Amazon's On-Demand video service, we watched all 9 episodes [10+ hours] of Ken Burns' legendary documentary The Civil War. I highly suggest you 'play' the youtube video at the bottom of this post while reading... again, great theme music [Jay Unger's Ashoken Farewell] helps make a great film.

Timothy O'Sullivan. A Harvest of Death,
Gettysburg, PA. July 1863.

We [at least my generation] all take for granted the standard history-channel type documentary: panning over photos, maps with troop movements, narration and actors reading historic quotations. This was the film that made it a standard. The Civil War was also an ideal event for this, as photography was still relatively new and photo-journalism as a profession was born during the conflict [all photos had to wait until after battle: exposure time was still too long to capture any 'action']. Using 1776 author David McCullough as main narrator, Ken Burns also hired Morgan Freeman, Sam Waterston, Garrison Keillor and others to bring contemporary letters and quotes to life. 

Alexander Gardner.
President Lincoln. 1863.

History is fascinating; the way great men [and women] seem to rise when crossroads of conflict erupt. Abraham Lincoln still has a demigod aura about him, 7 score and 5 years later. But even in The Civil War's humanizing analysis of the President, the way he conducted his tenure in office [surrounding himself not with yes-men, but with a cabinet full of differing opinions on almost everything] is something little seen today. To give arguably the greatest, concise [10 sentence] speech in American history with the Union fighting anti-war sentiment in the north- not knowing that the Battle of Gettysburg would eventually be hailed as the turning point of the war: Amazing. The Gettysburg Address sums up everything that the Union was fighting for: to prove that a nation founded as a free democratic republic can survive its greatest threat- internal revolt and secession against the Constitution.


Please, watch Ken Burns' The Civil War if you get the chance. It is more-than relevant in today's political climate. Not that we're headed towards any sort of physical civil war: it helps put a lot of things into proper perspective.