Civil War

Over the last two months of our RVing tour of the US, we have spent most of it learning about the history of the formation of the United States of America, in Virginia, viewing historical landmarks in the capital city of Washington, considering the impact of the battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, and it has been fascinating.  

The rest of the time we were involved in the prenuptial activities and the wedding of my husband’s son.  My mother suffered an “evil” stepmother, so I have always had an issue with calling myself the “stepmother” of Steven, the groom, and his brother Mike, his best man.  Besides, their mom is alive and very much a part of their lives, so they have never had any need of a second mother.  If you are divorced, and remarried, you might understand how complicated past, present and future family relationships can turn out to be, and how painful it is to meet up with estranged first spouses and put on brave faces for the sake of a child’s wedding.  Weddings are normally fraught with tension and over-sensitivity anyway; so much to organize and plan; so many people’s emotions to take responsibility for.  A potential for a "civil" war, if ever there was one!!

However, we met some lovely people, made new friends, and the joy on the beautiful bride Melinda and her new husband Steven’s faces on their special day

made the discomfort Richard and I had to privately endure over a few weeks absolutely worthwhile.

Recognition of wars has been pretty much our focus since.  Richmond, Virginia, where the wedding was held, was founded in 1737. In 1775, Patrick Henry delivered his famous "Give me Liberty or Give me Death" speech, which helped to ignite the Revolutionary War.  It was also the Confederate Capital during the US Civil War, which raged between 1861 and 1865. 

For the uninformed (like I pretty much was  until this last month), the American Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, but the Civil War determined what kind of nation it would be.  The war resolved two fundamental questions left unclear by the Revolution and the Declaration of Independence: whether the United States was to be a dis-solvable confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government; and whether this nation, born out of a declaration that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slave-holding country in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War

President Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address is commemorated on the walls of his Memorial

which is situated at one end of The National Mall, with the Washington Monument in the middle looking down onto the White House,

 and the nation’s Capitol at the other end,
and various memorials and monuments in between, as well as numerous Smithsonian Museums. We visited the American History museum which gave me a crash course in the American Revolution and the Civil War.  I also learned about the role of the President, Congress, and the Senate which all helped when we visited the Capitol.   Unfortunately it was getting its dome fixed both inside and out, which affected our photo opportunities within this impressive building.

You could hardly make out Pocahonta in her wedding picture!

Previous Presidents were also recognized along and around this central Mall.  Jefferson, FDR and Martin Luther King Jr all have their own Memorials, Reagan and Kennedy have landmark buildings named after them.  As memorials go, I thought the National WWII memorial’s fountains dividing two semi-circular rows of columns, each representing the states on either side of the Continental Divide, (Pacific and Atlantic) were pretty impressive. 

It never really gets noticed when you look at the iconic photographs from one end or another of the Mall. 

The other one I thought was very moving in a more graphically immediate way was the Korean War Memorial.  Of course, how can you feel not moved by any of the war memorials?

Our trip to the National Museum of the American Indian showed how western expansion decimated the indigenous people, and later empire building meted out the same treatment in places like Hawaii.

However, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum was probably the most moving for me.  With a mother who was a holocaust survivor, I thought I knew a lot about this particular war, but I was proved wrong.  You can read more about that visit here

We left Washington much more aware of America’s history, and not before we had our own personal experience of shaking hands with the current President.  Staying at Joint Base Andrews Air Force Base RV camp gave us an opportunity to see him playing golf.  The seventeenth green is right beside the camp, and we watched from a safe distance as he played.  We didn’t expect to shake his hand, but we did, for he saw the group of campers watching and came over for a quick hello. 

I have no political grudge to bear. I cannot vote, and I certainly don’t understand enough about American politics to have an opinion.  But I was excited to shake the hand of the man currently the Head of State of the country I am enjoying living in.  I thought he looked old.  I guess the burden of leadership and decisions of whether to keep the peace, is a tough one to bear.

Despite the wonderful weather we encountered in Washington (Richmond was cold!), we moved north, hoping to be in Canada by May, but reluctant to venture too close as we saw snow forecast in New York State.  We decided to wait a week and round off our history lesson at the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum.  Pelting rain stopped us seeing the battlefield in person, but we did see a marvelous circular painting – a Cyclorama of the battle with light and sound effects, which bought history to life in a visual way that normal Museum exhibits cannot.

Once again I encountered President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but this time understood its context.  It confronted the question of whether the lives lost on either side during that battle were in vain. This famous speech, delivered for the dedication of the Soldiers National Cemetery in Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, in the middle of the war, affirmed the need to continue that war, despite the enormous loss of life. 

It is a rousing speech, and brings a lump to your throat.  However, it seems to me, with the naivety of a 62 year old woman who has never encountered war other than in historical books and films and on the media, (and the occasional wedding), that those who chose to fight for their lives in the furor of a political storm do it for the right reasons, as they understand them.  This is why nations go to war.  Who, without the benefit of hindsight and a full picture of history, and the full conclusion of the aftermath of that war, can make a judgement call on whether their efforts were in vain?

The war cost more than a quarter of a million lives, almost as many as have died in wars participated in by the USA in the last 150 years.  It left the northern and western states richer, the southern states destitute, and couldn’t stop the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and the Jim Crow segregation laws in its aftermath.  It took another 100 years before the Civil Rights Movement made further strides with the status of “equal right to liberty” for black communities. 

I couldn’t help but think as I left the museum, that war usually resolves absolutely nothing.  It just leaves children burdened by the aftermath of the quarrels of their forefathers.

Just like divorced families, I guess.