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[Thomas Thorne]

My introduction to the Civil War was Fletcher Pratt's wonderful history for children, "The Civil War." I learned very early and have never entirely let go of the idea of the War being "the American Iliad" where gallant Americans on both sides fought each other fiercely but did not entirely abandon their humanity.

Perhaps such a concept was a prerequisite to reconciliation in the generations after the war. Perhaps it even helped prevent another Civil War in the 1960's over the civil rights revolution. I don't think many 1915 observers of the American South or South Africa would have predicted that these white supremacy regimes would have disappeared without a bloodbath.

The attractiveness of the idea of the American Iliad should not blind us to the hard and bitter truths of the Civil War. We can not deny that slavery was horrible and was the overwhelming cause of the War. We can not forget the atrocities on both sides and must never forget that the freed slaves were shamefully abandoned after Reconstruction.

I find it very difficult to credit accusations by some people that today's White Southerners are seeking to restore white supremacy when many of these White Southerners do all all sort of intellectual gyrations to convince themselves that race had little or nothing to do with the Civil War.

Tom