American Civil War Celeberations

The 150^th anniversary of the American Civil War, the day when the whole American nation was divided into two rival groups who fought a bloody war with each other, is celebrated amidst the traditional confusions about its beginning and the role that the leaders of that time played in it.

On the one hand, to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the civil war, the attack on Fort Sumter, bells rang in the New York schools and government buildings, a few have also fired cannons shots, and on the other, the national archives made public poet Whitman’s civil war documents. Whitman, while staying in Washington D.C., from 1863 to 1873, transcribed many documents related to civil war. This he did during his job as a clerk at different offices and his job responsibilities include transcription of letters and records.

Whitman was among those people who took sides with humanity and freedom during the civil, and as a humanist and freedom loving creative person, he did not discriminate between the wounded people on the two sides and served both.

On this 150^th anniversary of the civil war, politicians from both democratic and republican parties used civil war rhetoric, and vowed to rise again. This surge in the use of civil war language as an instrument of communication has to do a lot with the recent land sliding upheavals in the world politics, especially in the Middle East. With so many Middle Eastern Revolutions on the media scene, this anniversary of the civil war came as a reminder of revolution.

However, according to history professor from Kansas, American people have a diminished memory of the civil war and especially Kansas’ role in the war is not remembered properly. The said professor is going to lecture on the theme of Public Memory of the Civil.

People in Georgia are commemorating this anniversary as a reminder about the burning of Georgia, three and a half years after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, on Tuesday, April 12.   

The battle between southerners and Yankees that started from the bloodless sacking of Fort Sumter, according to Goodheart, the author of 1861: The Civil War Awakening, was actually the result of a misconception on the part of southerners who miscalculated the behavior of Yankees to fancy that Yankees would not fight a battle to include south in the union territory.

According to Goodheart the civil war, as most of the Americans think, was not about stats’ rights; it was about ceasing more authority over slaves; the right to carry slaves along with them if they chose to relocate from one state to the other.