The Crossroads of Our Being

I've thought about this statement often over the last year. The average citizen seems to know very little about the Civil War. Not surprising. History hasn't ever been a popular subject for the American student, unless it provides them a bit of trivia to look good at parties. And historical thinking seems to be a tad anathema.

Shelby Foote's words are just as appropriate now, as when he first uttered them.

"Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based, on an understanding of the Civil War. I believe that firmly. It defined us. The Revolution did what it did. Our involvement in European wars, beginning with the First World War, did what it did. But the Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things. And it is very necessary, if you're going to understand the American character in the twentieth century, to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the mid-nineteenth century. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads."[1]

Footnotes

[1] Shelby Foote, Stars in Their Courses: The Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863, [the Modern Library of the World's Best Books] (New York: Modern Library, 1994), viii.