Member Review Reflection

[Bentonville]

(I don't know about this question as to where it should go. I can't quite put a finger on it. So, for lack of a better place...)

What do you see in the war?

I was thinking about as I was watching a documentary last night on the Peach Orchard at Shiloh. It was going into tactics in my head and it dawned on me; why am I watching this?

Passed the history why?

I really gave it some thought. There has to be something to it. I wonder if it's a reflection. It was a uniquely American war. I had ancestors who fought. Strangely ancestors seems a bizarre term for family but let's face it, it's long enough ago where they are ancestors.

It's after the actual war itself maybe its tactics and the connection of family, war and death. I'll be 45 next year and mortality has come into my mind quie a bit as I'm facing some death in my family's future.

(To one extent or another I must be a little crazy. My wife says I sometimes [calmly, mostly] orders one would issue for a company in that era.

I've never made it through Hardee's infantry tactics. Ever.

Maybe more crazy for even posting this. So what do you see in it? Them, you, history, tactics?

These odd reflections keep me up at night. Which is why I keep Hardee on my night stand.

 

[Sheltowee]

So many facets to the war. One one hand, it was the first "modern" war- and the savagery was numbing. On the other hand, it was full of instances where the combatants were gracious to one another. Kind of mind- boggling to consider today.

It encompassed the entire country. Courthouse squares from Maine to Nebraska show the evidence. So many family stories continue to be told.

Why does it matter? I fully agree with Shelby Foote-

The nation had come face-to-face with a dreadful tragedy...And yet that's what made us a nation. Before the war, people had a theoretical notion of having a country, but when the war was over, on both sides they knew they had a country. They'd been there.