Now able to read a mag again after a busy time, I happened on National Geographic for May. The illustrated article about war illustrators was fascinating - as were the photos of re-enactments cleverly produced to suggest age yet always including a modern idiom such as a parked car.

Having had surfeit of the war through TV progs and many films, I thought I was immune from interest but it is a captivating revelation and it spurs me on to read the several unread books on this war that I have bought but not read in UK. There is something very very sad about a civil war. I have visited sites in the US and their well kept museums. I wonder, did the wounds ever really heal? I hope so.

I think the wounds are there still, but in slightly less people. The Historum site is full of people re-fighting the Civil War, and more importantly who was to blame for it. (Almost as many as the Napoleon fans, trying to prove that he really won Waterloo!)

I have been to the USA, and every battlefield has it's memorials & interpretive sites, etc. They do these things a lot better that us - maybe because their history is so short, they are a bit obsessive about it. They are very proud of great-grandpaw, who was a boy of 16 at the battle of Hicksville, VA, or somewhere, and the 'Daughters of the Grand Army of the Republic', or somebody, will be running a museum in memory of it. The slaughter was immense, and the memories are still hurting, in a lot of hearts.

But I mentioned the Crimean War to someone, and he had never heard of it - US history only in school!

The sites, Giraffe are nicel spread out in big open spaces. Europe is one big memorial, in a sense. I too have met p with that insular knowledge of history and in people who influence policy - which is unsettling. The naivitee (sp?) has always made others cautious. On the other hand there are the Pattons who are soaked in war history.

I am one to talk. When that moving time line map came on these boards I was ashamed about how little I knew of what had been going on in Europe for a thousand years. Then there is Asia, I know more of that but probably a great deal more about ancient stuff in Europe - so no, I shouldn't be chucking stones about. Amercans are always curious about where I come from because my spoken English is so good....... England? Gee! Is thad a fack? I then can become very well spoken.... To The Manor Born.

Since the scots harbour all kinds of grievance for battles long gone I wondered if that was true in the US? It is a more homogenised and transient society I guess.

It was startling to learn that George Bush Jnr had never been out of USA. May be he had not been allowed out of other places either....... mieow....

I was trying to explain about Carrickfergus castle - 800 yrs old, last fired it's guns in anger at John Paul Jones (they had heard of HIM!) and was last updated with large cannon for the Crimean War. The only castle I have seen with cannon big enough to need rails, and ropes set into the wall to pull them around to aim! A grand wee castle, for a day out, with a statue of King Billy just outside. (life size - all 5ft nothing-ish of him!)

And then I went to the 'oldest house' in Springfield, Illinois - built 1837 or so! Abe Lincoln's house is just up the street a bit.

Aye, I know about those USA oldest house. Makes one realise also how young their country is - not even a teenager yet. I never found any one believed that I was born in a house that was nearly 400 years old - and by UK standards that ain't really old. American family who arrived in our much older village home were speachless, beyond 'Geeeeee!' They had also assumed that old places in British films were sets. And they were only two generations away from UK. Their insularity bothers me when they try to understand ancient cultures such as Afghanistan. After 50 years of trying to understand such tribal ways I know just how much I don't understand.

Priscilla wrote:

Now able to read a mag again after a busy time, I happened on National Geographic for May. The illustrated article about war illustrators was fascinating - as were the photos of re-enactments cleverly produced to suggest age yet always including a modern idiom such as a parked car.

Having had surfeit of the war through TV progs and many films, I thought I was immune from interest but it is a captivating revelation and it spurs me on to read the several unread books on this war that I have bought but not read in UK. There is something very very sad about a civil war. I have visited sites in the US and their well kept museums. I wonder, did the wounds ever really heal? I hope so.

Hi Priscilla,

The wounds of the American Civil War are still there. About five miles from my home in Marietta Georgia, there is the Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield park, where Southern General Johnston tried to fight the last action before General Sherman arrived in Atlanta. I do not know whether he actually burnt it or it was burnt down by marauders; you can see it all in the Classic film "Gone with the Wind." Any way for a long time, in fact until recent times the South went into a kind of slumber; they could not elect a President, they did not have the most modern education system and the modern industrial age let them by. However,there have been many changes in my lifetime: First Lyndon Johnson as the first pots-civil war Southern president, then many nuclear Power Plants, being run with competence and safety in mind, some very good Universities, like Georgia Tech, not up to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but coming close.

However, the politics of the North and the South differ; for a long time the South was a bastion of the Democratic party, now of the Republican party, which is sad, because the Republican have gone so far off base, they have gone into the backwoods.

The South is a friendly, polite part of the US and I like living here, although I spent about 20 years in Long Island, New York.

As to who started the Civil War, well if South Carolina had not fired on Fort Sumter, a really asinine thing to do, for all the losses of the war in casualties; four years of extreme suffering for both sides.

Tas

But is there personal ire? I have met Scottish people in UK with grievance about things that happened hundreds of years ago - and quite vindictive with it.

I never met with that in the subcontinent - where they also have good reason or even memory of English/British hegemony. In fact the reverse is true. Old soldiers have pointed out with pride where such regiments held sway and generals strutted. That I knew not the generals personally made for lowering my esteem rating no end - and this from cooks and such.

Good to meet up again with yet another backdrop. I like this board and wish some of the old contenders on Beeb had 'come over.' Now that's a real subcontinent remark. When offered it has an empty ring now and lacks the warmth of early days when it would have seemed rude not to have dropped in unannounced. Regards, P.

Priscilla wrote:

But is there personal ire? I have met Scottish people in UK with grievance about things that happened hundreds of years ago - and quite vindictive with it.

I never met with that in the subcontinent - where they also have good reason or even memory of English/British hegemony. In fact the reverse is true. Old soldiers have pointed out with pride where such regiments held sway and generals strutted. That I knew not the generals personally made for lowering my esteem rating no end - and this from cooks and such.

Good to meet up again with yet another backdrop. I like this board and wish some of the old contenders on Beeb had 'come over.' Now that's a real subcontinent remark. When offered it has an empty ring now and lacks the warmth of early days when it would have seemed rude not to have dropped in unannounced. Regards, P.

Hi Priscilla, old friend, fellow refugee from the defunct Beeb,

Yes I think there are still some ill-feelings of some sort, but in many cases turned into a kind of humor. I was at a nuclear safety seminar being held in Augusta Georgia, when a Southerner was in close conversation with many of my collegues from New York. Some one from among the Southerners said, humourously, "Hey Peter, what are you doing among that bunch of Yankees?" Everyone laughed including all the Yankees, and I asid, " I am no Yankee; I am a Canadian." To which there was added laughter.

In the subcontinent, those of us old enough to have savored the Raj, tell the young about it and look wistfully our good fortune. Regards,

Tas

A new film about the American Civil War, somewhat unusual in that it looks at the War from the perspective of Southern Unionists, a group who, so far, have been ignored.

The State of Mississippi seceded from the Union, Jones County seceded from Mississippi.

Indeed, it's well worth a view, especially the wartime scenes. My main gripe is that after the war it focuses too much on Knight himself, when I'd have liked some follow-up on what happened to his followers, esp the white ones who I understand were the great majority. We see Knight expressing regret at their lack of interest in joining the Union League (though it's not clear exactly why they should have wanted to) and that's the last we hear of them. After that, he's pretty much Robin Hood without the Merrie Men.

I'll definitely give this film a try.

18th July 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, first Afro-American regiment to be raised in the North, launches an assault on Fort Wagner, one of the key defences of the Port of Charleston: