Shiloh Had As Many Casualties As Waterloo,

It Began With One Act Of Madness, And It Ended With Another. John Brown Heard History's Clock Strike In The Night And Tried To Hurry Dawn Along With Gunfire; Now John Wilkes Booth Heard The Clock Strike, And He Tried With Gunfire To Restore The Darkness. Each Man Stood Outside The Human Community, Directed By Voices The Sane Do Not Hear, And Each Kept History From Going Logically... The Line From Harper's Ferry To Ford's Theater Is A Red Thread Binding The Immense Disorder Of The Civil War Into An Irrational Sort Of Coherence.

Beneath Everything Else, North And West, There Ran A Profound, Unvoiced, Almost Subconscious Conviction That The [american] Nation Was Going To Go On Growing-in Size, In Power, In Everything A Man Could Think Of-and In That Belief There Was A Might And A Fury That Would Take Form Instantly At The Moment Of Shock.

The Enduring Realization That When A Great Challenge Comes, The Most Ordinary People Can Show That They Value Something More Than They Value Their Own Lives. When The Last Of The Veterans Had Gone, And The Sorrows And Bitterness Which The War Created Had At Last Worn Away, This Memory Remained.

The 1860 Election Became A Referendum On The Southern Way Of Life.

Between 1861 And 1865, Americans Made War On Each Other And Killed Each Other In Great Numbers - If Only To Become The Kind Of Country That Could No Longer Conceive Of How That Was Possible.