American Civil War For Dummies. Keith D. Dickson
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Introduction
It is interesting that for over 150 years, in times of controversy, public discourse has always turned to the Civil War. Everyone, it seems, is compelled to return to the war to highlight some aspect of an argument. This should not be surprising because the Civil War created the modern United States and defined the people who called themselves Americans. The war was a fundamental watershed in our history — marked by a staggering cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate casualties and 50,000 civilian deaths — defining both who we are as a nation and who we are as Americans. It is therefore natural that we continue to return to the war as a starting point for any discussion today about what America is and what America means.
The Civil War is still very much with us for a number of reasons. America’s Civil War has epic dimensions, equal to Homer’s Iliad or Virgil’s Aeneid. Like any great epic, it has all the elements of tragedy and pathos; it has immortal heroes who control the destinies of nations. There are great battles on land and sea that stir deep emotions. The experiences of Army of the Potomac, the Army of Northern Virginia, the Army of the Cumberland, and the Army of the Tennessee marching across a vast landscape, each composed of free and self-reliant Americans joined together to strive in a common cause, surpasses Xenophon’s account of the Greek army in Anabasis.
This was a war that consumed the vital energies of an entire continent. We are still very much aware of the human dimension of the war: The passions, the sorrows, the hopes, joys, and despair