The old understanding of the Civil War was that it was a bloody tragedy that destroyed countless lives on both sides, but ended with a stronger union and renewed patriotism across the land. The valor and sacrifice of Southern soldiers was honored as well as the victorious North.
Later generations viewed the result of the Civil War as a broken family coming back together, not a Southern enemy crushed without mercy and excised from history as villains without redemption. We ended as one nation, indivisible. We honored all of our dead.
With those honors came understanding. The children of the Civil War thought it was important to understand how it happened, why brothers would take up arms against each other, how distinguished generals could turn against their country, and how the wounds eventually healed.
When I was young, we were taught that all of those people were Americans all along, even when they raised another flag and went to war. It was all part of the story we shared together, a terrible chapter to be remembered, not a page to be torn from our history and burned.
And you couldn't really understand the magnitude of the tragedy - you couldn't truly be determined to ensure that such a terrible thing never happened again - without understanding that brave men who thought themselves righteous fought on both sides.
Only then could you see what a horror the Civil War was. Only then could you appreciate what was lost. You can never get that by turning the war into a G.I. Joe vs. Cobra cartoon. You can repeat the words of the Gettysburg Address, but you'll never really understand them.
How can you understand the depth of a tragedy unless you take the full measure of what was lost? How can you chart the course of that bloody Civil War road unless you also follow the road that was not taken, the great things all of the fallen might have accomplished?
How can you resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, but rather for a new birth of freedom, unless you remember who they were?
/end
/end
