The Country's Common Ground

The title to this post comes from a postcard I bought while in Gettysburg, and it seemed very fitting to this week's readings. While of course the Civil War was a time of division and great animosity between North and South, the sacrifices and devestation were shared between both sides.

Even though the Civil War quite literally cut the country in two, the words of people from all over America were similar in their response to the tragedy of the war. Both Henry Timrod, a southern poet, and Walt Whitman, a writer from the North, composed works of mournful poetry reagarding casualties from the war. And despite these writers being from opposing viewpoints, their works are related in tone and message. Whitman writes of the moving experience of caring for those wounded in "The Wound Dresser" with, "The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,/ I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,/ Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad." While in "The Charleston Ode," Timrod writes of fallen soldiers as they will be rememberd, "Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years/ Which keep in trust your storied tombs,/ Behold! your sisters bring their tears,/ And these memorial blooms." Without context, one would have no idea these writers and the soldiers they immortalized in words were enemies in a bitterly opposed society and war.

While remnants of the Civil War and old prejudices are still evident in some aspects of culture today, the unison of both the Northern and Southern cultures and literatures has resulted in one diverse American society. And even though it is vital to always remember the mistakes and conflicts of the past, it is also vital to respect them. Walt Whitman understood this when he ended his Memoranda During the War with,

"And now, to thought of these- on these graves of the dead of the War, as on an altar- to memory of these, or North or South, I close and dedicate my book."