In April 1865, America was a different place from what it had been just four years before. Atlanta: burned. Richmond: burned. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: burned. Swaths of the South were scissored with trenches and abatis and pocked with shell holes. Washington, D.C., had become an army town, with barricades in the streets and more than 500 bordellos behind the shades. And in every city and town, North as well as South, there were changes among the people: men who were gone, men who were maimed, people who had been masters who were now nearly helpless, people who were free who had to discover how to live freely. The story of America had been revised with chapters on Antietam, Gettysburg and Andersonville, and on emancipation and citizenship and a new birth of freedom, the meanings of which were unsettled then and elude full agreement even now.
Read Full Article »
