The civil war was the seminal American experience — one’s reactions to it still form one’s identity as an American, wrote the late journalist Tony Horwitz, author of the best-selling 1998 book, “Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War.”
We are still debating whether the war was primarily about slavery or preservation of the union, state’s rights, racial discrimination, and its legacy, whether we should feel the shame and pain of our ancestors, resentment, guilt, or simple pride in our heritage.
Horwitz himself had no ancestors in the civil war — his grandfather immigrated from Russia in the 1880s. Yet his grandfather, who lived to be more than 100 years old, had a fascination with the civil war and handed that fascination down to Tony, who was puzzled over why his grandfather was so fascinated with this history and concluded
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