Killer Angels

One hundred and fifty years ago, the Battle of Gettysburg was concluded 3 July 1863.  Three days of hell were played out in the rolling ridges and hills of that small township that was tactically flawed but strategically vital for the United States of America. I have just read the last page of Michael Shaara's classic, Killer Angels. Three hundred forty-five pages that I could not stop reading; amazing.

 

The movie, Gettysburg, was made in 1986 and was shot on location on the Gettysburg battlefields and the Shaara book was the foundation upon which the movie was put together.  It was amazing to me having seen the movie numerous times and having walked the fields myself written about and filmed about this great battle that changed the world forever.  As I sit here today, I long to return to Gettysburg and stand on the eastern crest of Little Round Top where my relatives from Alabama were repelled by the 20th Maine and the infamous Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. I have stood behind Devil's Den and found the location where my great grand father and his two brothers fought and were fired down upon behind Devil's Den down a slight hill by a New York artillery battery as they moved south to ascend Big Round Top as part of the 15th Alabama; but repelled in a blood bath.

 

This blog is not built to lift praises to the movie, the book nor the great battle but rather to focus on the horrific realities we face today in this nation on so many fronts. The American Civil War was fought for several reasons with states' right being at the top of the mountain from the Southern perspective.  The amazing reality for me in 2013 is realizing how powerful the forces and similarities are today as they were in the early to mid nineteenth century that led to the horrific War.  It was the sense of the Southern states that were generating nearly 80% of the United States Gross Domestic Product with tobacco and cotton industries for export to Europe that were feeling more and more like subordinated, minor states to the Federal rule and arrogance of the Northern States.  One can, even today, understand the anguish and anxiety that such a situation would trigger.

 

The means to fill the expanded export market needs to generate the great wealth of the South and thus the United States treasury was the terrible issue of cheap labor to farm the products for sale; slavery.  Slavery was a very normal, horrific yes, but normal way of life for millions during that period of our history.  But that awful way of life formulated a second strategic initiative for the initiation of hostilities by the South at Fort Sumter in 1861. Nearly 700,000 dead Americans later across the next nearly five years, an assassinated President, destroyed national infrastructure that had to be rebuilt and our posture in the global village demeaned and destroyed for nearly another fifty years formulated the terrible logarithm of the time.  We have the history in word, in film, in papers, in letters, in novels, in song to affirm what it written above. Sad but so very true!

 

The really sad but so very true prism is that in 2013 the same demons abound on a grand scale. The parallels are striking and startling to me at times.  The most recent glaring example resides with the simply terrible Trial of Zimmerman and the aftermath.  The trial was conducted fairly, fully and ruled by a most competent judge.  The jury that was selected by both the defense and the prosecution and they were apparently stellar in their attentiveness, their deliberation detail and their professionalism  during the awful sequester.  The jury rendered a verdict!

 

Some of the same people I watched and listened to that were praising the greatness and fairness of the selected jury before the verdict are not attacking the jury, the decision, the process, the prosecution ... and I seek to step above the whole matter and try to understand the great Why!  The great Why, I believe, resides in the metaphor of the opening paragraphs of our nation at almost one hundreds years of age, your remember the "four score and seven years .."  that is eighty-seven years Lincoln referred to in his Gettysburg Address!

 

Being a Southern born and reared man, I recall vividly the great Civil Rights battles and issues of the age in Birmingham, Selma, the Freedom Riders, the Mississippi killings, the burned buses in Anniston, AL, and on and on; clear, real, tangible realities of the 1960s in the South. To this day it elicits a sense of hurt and embarrassment to me but it is not the 1960s anymore, is it?  Certainly not and I am not stupid enough to believe racism is a dead issue in any state  or county or city or nation for that matter.  It is a horrific blight on mankind. This blight has been made fervently clear to me personally with our precious adopted grand daughter from Ethiopia we have been blessed to have in our family for just over three years.

 

As a family, we have seen the "looks," the "stares," the "whisperings" and some not so polite comments my son's family have experienced as well as my wife and me. With each I find myself more proud, more honored and more blessed that God delivered this child destined to die in an orphanage in Ethiopia due to lack of food that has changed every person in our family in many different hues and shades.  Her glowing smile, magnetic personality, unbounded energy and her unique way of making everyone she encounters smile is unbelievable.  We are blessed!  But the blessing I realize more and more is how God has used that precious child to ferret some feelings and beliefs and stereotypes that I held and would have fought someone if they had brought them to my attention. Ms Hope has brought a mirror to my soul about other people that are different that me in a way I could never have imagined. Thank God for that mirror!

 

My concern for our nation is at fever pitch on the whole issue of race. When I was in my mid teens I was too dumb to really grasp what it all meant. Now in my mid sixties I believe I fully grasp the issues that reside and resound due to life, maturity, experiences, living.  Racism is STUPID!  As this "after the Trial" battle tries daily to be ratched up as a Civil Rights issue by those from the 1960s that rode the coattail of Dr King, a great man, I have come to realize, with the shadows of the 1960s rhetoric we hear loudly today, I would have hoped we as a nation had move farther along the pathway. I believe many have but not all and certainly not enough!

 

The American Civil War was fought to, in essence, legitimize the young nation and our Constitution.  Here we stand one and one-half centuries later fighting the same ghosts, inhibitions and deterrents to real societal improvements and growth. It is my prayer that the same images in the mirror of the 1860s do not ultimately have to be rendered or evaporated with civil and / or military force. But the clouds are there!!  But lest we forget we are the greatest economic force on the face of the earth and not an 1860s loose grouping of states / colonies.  No, we are the huge elephant in the refrigerator and the world is watching as are our enemies.  As a nation, we are weak diplomatically, politically, militarily, economically and societally and where there is weakness, there is danger; NEVER forget that!!

 

Are we better than this? Absolutely!  Our future as a nation, as a democracy and as a People reside in large part on how we reconstruct ourselves an a nation screaming for reconstruction and there is certainly no pun intended for Reconstruction is a dismal period of our post Civil War period far too many have forgotten. We are better than this but the world is watching!!!!