Tom Elmore
Why study the civil war?
Mon Jul 2 21:36:24 2001


Well, if you live in the United States and would like to understand its people, you must understand the Civil War. It has shaped this rather young nation with more profound and lasting effects than perhaps any other single event in our history. If you read the paper on any given day you will find that we are still confronting many of the same issues as our ancestors did, but hopefully we will never again attempt to resolve our diffences through civil war. Those who are certain never to make that mistake are the very ones who now study our Civil War in earnest because they understand what the cost is in terms of human lives lost and shared misery that took decades to overcome.