MM#297--To Understand the United States; You Must Understand the U.S. Civil War

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. As is our custom, let's begin with our first pull quote. The Civil War was fought in 10,000 places, from Val d'Orde, mexico, to Telegoma, tennessee, to St Albans, vermont, to Ferradina on the Florida coast. More than three million Americans fought in it, over 600,000 men 2% of the population died in it. American homes became headquarters, american churches and schoolhouses sheltered the dying and huge foraging armies swept across American farms, burned American towns. Americans slaughtered one another wholesale right here in America, and their own corn fields and peach orchards along familiar roads and by waters with old American names. In two days, shiloh, on the banks of the Tennessee River, more American men fell than in all previous American wars combined. At Cold Harbor, some 7,000 Americans fell in 20 minutes. Men who had never strayed 20 miles from their own front doors now found themselves soldiers in great armies fighting epic battles hundreds of miles from home. They knew they were making history and it was the greatest adventure of their lives. The Civil War has been given many names the war between the states, the war against Northern aggression, the Second American Revolution, the Lost Cause, the War of the Rebellion, the Brothers' War, the late unpleasantness. Walt Whitman called it the war of attempted secession. Confederate General Joseph Johnston called it the war against the states. By whatever name, it was unquestionably the most important event in the life of a nation, this nation. It saw the end of slavery and the downfall of a southern political planter, aristocracy. It was the watershed of a new political and economic order, in the beginning of big industry, big business, big government. It was the first modern war for Americans, the costliest, yielding the most American casualties and the greatest domestic suffering. Spiritually and physically, it was the most horrible, necessary, intimate, acrimonious, mean-spirited and heroic conflict the nation has known. These words come to us in an excellent book called the Civil War in Illustrated History, compiled and written by Jeffrey Ward with Rick and Ken Burns. To understand the United States, it is my firm belief that you must understand the US Civil War. Most students in public or private schools are no longer learning about the US Civil War. They don't know the places or the names who fought in it. They don't know the themes or the reasons why it was fought. They don't even know the time period in which it was fought. This is all a shame. It's part of the American story. In fact, it's the most important part of the story. It's part of our founding too, because it is in the American Civil War that we have the greatest president who has ever served, abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, many believe, began the country's second founding. We will explore this theme in much later Mojo Minutes. To help us understand the second founding, he even coined the term we have a new birth or freedom, which references the second founding. But for today's Mojo Minute, let us explore the Civil War in general. Going back to the book, at what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? How we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never All the armies of Europe, asia and Africa, combined with all of the treasure of the earth, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years, if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide. Abraham Lincoln 1838. Those profound words spoken by Lincoln were 23 years before a shot was fired in hatred to start the American Civil War. Let's go back to the book. Between 1861 and 1865, americans made war on each other and killed each other in great numbers, if only to become the kind of country that could no longer conceive of how that was possible. What began as a bitter dispute over union and states' rights ended as a struggle over the meaning of freedom in America. At Gettysburg in 1863, abraham Lincoln said, perhaps more than he knew, the war was about a quote new birth of freedom. This book is the accompanying volume to how I was introduced to the Civil War. I learned about it from a wonderful and most beautiful if we can say that about a documentary. Most gripping, I guess would be a better phrase. A most gripping documentary, save for the World War, the World at War series that I have shared from this microphone in the past. You see it was the fall of 1990. School had just started up again after Labor Day. I was a sophomore in high school In the Chicago Bulls at the time my favorite basketball team because of the high-flying Michael Jordan weren't going to be playing real games until November. So I was flipping around the TV when I came across the most sweet and haunting sound I had ever heard, but it was captivating too. The sound was that of a song titled A Shokin Farewell. I would later learn. I'll put a link in the show notes so you can listen to it. The song grabbed me, the 16-year-old kid. The sound again was haunting and yet sweet. I knew then immediately that my soul was stirred. The picture on the screen was that of bombed-out ruins of a city, somewhere panning to the left and to the right, of dead bodies of wreckage, of soldiers looking to stop for a photograph they didn't much want to take. Then came a grandfatherly voice, that of the narrator. Later I would know him as the great historian David McCalla. Its broadcast was the first of five consecutive nights, starting on September 23rd, running through September 27th 1990. Mccalla said what I had read in our opening the Civil War was fought in over 10,000 places. I watched it from beginning to end, not knowing what I was watching. I couldn't take my eyes off of it Again. I was captivated. This was the Civil War documentary crafted by Ken Burns along with his brother, rick Burns. It garnered more than 39 million viewers to watch one episode. This book that I'm sharing is a companion book to the 11 part video series, because the US Civil War is barely taught anymore, or if it is taught in schools, it's glossed over without much meaning to its importance. But it is important. It's most important. It's perhaps just as important as the founding of our country Because of what Lincoln said at Gettysburg it was our new birth of freedom. Going back to the book Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in the Declaration of Independence extended to us. Frederick Douglass asked a mostly white Fourth of July gathering at Rochester, new York, in 1852. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn To drag a man in fetters into the grand, illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems or in human mockery and sacrilegious irony. That same year Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin or Life Among the Lowly. If there had been a great preparatory blast of trumpets or if it had been announced that I would do this or that, she remembered, I think it likely that I could not have written. But nobody expected anything. So I wrote freely. It was sentimental, sometimes patronizing, implausible in its many and many of its details. Simon Legree, the villainous overseer, is a New Englander. Most of the book was written in Brunswick, maine. Its author had spent precisely one weekend in a slave state. The climactic scene, the tragic death of the noble Uncle Tom, came to her, she said, in a vision while she sat in church. But her portrayal of slavery's cruelty moved readers as nothing else had. More than 300,000 books were sold in the United States within the year and a million and a half pirated copies were in print worldwide. The novel spawned songs, plays, a car game played by Northern children that showed the continual separation of slave families. Mrs Charles Dickens wept over it. So did Queen Victoria. Many today say that our nation is divided just like that during the Civil War. Perhaps people should study that war, that time period, more closely, you could say. Is a portion our new slavery, a divisive issue that is causing the country to split apart? Perhaps Are American self-selecting where to live, based on the culture of extreme politics, just like they did before and during the Civil War? Yes, they are. Do we lack any form of leadership from most of our country's leaders, just like the decade leading up to the American Civil War? Yes, we are. Some are starting to make the claim that our time now is worse than the Civil War, and that's where we need to stop and learn our history and learn our American story. We need to learn from the good and genuine historians who tell the truth and have a desire to know the truth from all of its different perspectives. As most historians, no matter their politics, will tell you, there was never a time worse in American history than that of Christmas 1862. For these points alone, if we lived back then and we were taking stock of our country, where we had been and where we were going, by Christmas of 1862, the country had split apart. We did not know the future, what will happen. Civil War had begun a year before. Many in the North believed that the war would be over in a matter of months. If you read a newspaper, which was the main means of communication, that was your expectation. It was not to be. The war had been raging for close to a year and a half by then. In the East, where most of the newspapers were, there was no major Union victory during that whole time. All the victories were for the South. The President, the US President, wasn't happy with any of his generals. It was a stalemate, major battle at a shallow creek in Maryland named Antietam, but it was the bloodiest single day in American history. That was in September of 1862. In a feeble attempt to fight, the Union tried to smash the Confederates at Fredericksburg, virginia, for it only to turn into murder, as most described in the book. That was in December 13th 1862. Over 12,000 Union dead or wounded in repeated frontal assaults up the hills against the place called Marie's Heights. Again, most described it as wholesale murder. So if we were living back then, the saddest and most difficult time period in the history of the war would have been for Christmas Day, 1862. This is part of our history. We should know it. We should learn it. The American Civil War is the most vital part of that history. Over the course of the next two years we will be sharing more and more about that history because it is important. We began the Academy with the book the History of the American Civil War. We began the Academy with the book Lincoln on the Verge, a wonderful book to start to understand that time period. We followed it up last year with Gettysburg by Stephen Sears. We talked about one of the most pivotal battlefields to save our country. This year will come more titles. So in today's Mojo Minute let us learn about the American Civil War. Let us learn and perhaps even watch the Ken Burns documentary about that war. It's a good starting point, especially with the younger generation. It captured me when I was young. Let us all so mature in knowing our country's history. We are in the golden age of books. Information is at our fingertips. We can read the great books about this time period. We can learn and we can discuss. We can have the humility to understand those that came before us. We're not the worst of the worst. Let us learn our history because we are an exceptional country, no matter our shortcomings. And to learn our history helps us for the future, for whatever is coming.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.