3/17/2023 0 Comments Civil strife![]() ![]() ![]() Lee and the rest of the Confederate generals had clearly been on the wrong side of history, and in the end, the war and all the death and destruction was justified by Lincoln’s glorious Emancipation Proclamation, and by “preserving the Union.”Īs a sixth grader, I didn’t grasp the subtle irony, when historians used the word “civil” to label a conflict that resulted in perhaps 600,000 untimely deaths… the subtle irony being, that “civil” also refers to a person who “embraces polite social intercourse and courtesy.”Īlmost sixty years later, I’m still writing reports, but now I typically use the word “civil” in the sense of “civil discourse.” Courteous discussions - often, about difficult topics. According to my source materials, Robert E. Thinking back on that adolescent project, my report was not at all “objective” or “unbiased.” I approached the project from the perspective that the Confederacy had been the bad guys from the very start, and convinced that Lincoln and the Union army - the good guys - had no choice but to attack the evil slavery-supported plantation owners and seek their utter defeat on the battlefield. My pencil drawing of the naval battle looked nothing like this painting: Detail of a painting by J O Davidson. ![]() I also spent time and effort on a pencil drawing illustrating the battle between the Union’s experimental armored vessel, the USS Monitor, and a similarly iron-clad vessel operated by the Confederacy called the Merrimac… or perhaps it was named the CSS Virginia? I don’t remember much about the report, other than the time I spent drawing a detailed map of the Battle of Gettysburg. (Back then, you could be sure of bumping up your grade if you used lots of pictures borrowed from National Geographic.) I titled the hand-written report, The Blue and the Gray, and as I recall, my teacher gave me an “A” on the report. My report was profusely illustrated with glossy images clipped from a couple of pertinent National Geographic magazines and pasted onto the blue-lined notebook pages. In some usages, civilis held essentially the same meaning as the words liberalis and affabilis.īack in sixth grade, I wrote a “report” on the American Civil War, based on research drawn mainly from a thick book I’d borrowed from a local library in Oakland, California. Roman citizenship conferred special rights and privileges not available to other subjects of the Empire, and Roman citizens were due a level of respect and courtesy not due, perhaps, to non-citizens. The word, ‘civil’, obtained an impressive range of meanings during the days of the Roman Empire, when the Latin word civilis meant ‘a citizen of Rome’. … of or occurring within the state or between citizens: ‘civil strife’ … of or relating to the citizen as an individual: ‘civil rights’ ![]()
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