When I was a kid, the American Civil War was mostly a boring subject that you suffered through in history class. About the only cultural reference to it was the opening song from the TV comedy series “F-Troop”; i.e. “The end of the Civil War was near . . .” My parents took my brother and me to Gettysburg one summer, but that was mostly just a yawn for us. About all I remember about Gettysburg was having pancakes in a local eatery and then looking out at some muddy hill slopes from a visitors center on a rainy day. We were less than impressed at the fact that a big battle took place on those hill slopes about a century ago, and that a lot of guys died there. What should I care; none of my ancestors were anywhere near the place when it was happening. They were all in Poland or White Russia at the time, dealing with their own various wars.

Then came my college years, when I joined my youthful colleges in focusing on a more relevant war, i.e. the one in Vietnam. That was the war we were going to stop; that was how we were going to change the world, rearrange the world (as CSN&Y; sang so soulfully). That was going to be our break from the mindless cycle of killing and destruction, of which the Civil War was just another horrible milestone. We were part of a revolution, part of a new day. Or so we liked to imagine.

After college, in my mid twenties, I moved a bit closer to Civil War country. I left my home in New Jersey to take a job in Washington DC. I lived on the south side of the Potomac, and thus I was nominally a Virginian, a citizen of a state rich in Civil War heritage. But even on my adopted turf in Arlington and Alexandria, the Civil War was a big yawn. No one ever seemed to talk about it; the one exception (which proved the rule) was that a fellow who grew up in Alexandria once told me that there hadn’t been any Civil War action in the vicinity, other than the Union defense fortifications protecting the Capitol. He obviously forgot (or didn’t know about) Jubal Early’s raid on D.C. in mid-1864. (Albeit, Early approached the area from the northwest along the Potomac River, on the Maryland side). Neither did I. We were still too caught up in our individual and collective hangover from the intoxicating dreams of the late 1960s.

Within the past 15 years, the Civil War has become a bit more fashionable. That was partially attributable to the Ken Burns series on PBS; although it’s hard to say if Burns and PBS actually caused the “Civil War comeback”, or were responding to early signs of it. We post-revolution baby boomers had become a bit more receptive to the notion that we hadn’t in fact re-invented the world; we could finally appreciate that history actually was relevant, that the basic themes of humankind have been playing themselves out for centuries and millennia before us, and would continue to do so with or without us.

Civil War history became a good excuse to find places to take our kids during summer vacation, or to visit and ponder ourselves. Being older and more reflective, we could now wander out to a valley or at a road crossing where a big battle had been fought and imagine the thunderous sound of the cannons, the advancing and retreating lines of soldiers, the crackling rifles, the horses charging, men bleeding, the smoke and confusion. We could ponder the political, economic and moral themes behind all the noise and carnage. And maybe we could even reflect on the philosophical aspects of a world of so many wonders and yet so many horrors; a world of so many dreams, not unlike our own revolutionary dreams, and yet a world of so much radical evil and failure.

I finally caught the Civil War fever a few years ago, in a milder but possibly longer-lasting form. I’m not participating in any battle recreation events (although they have become quite popular), especially since I’m back in New Jersey. And I haven’t yet made a second trip to Gettysburg or any other battle site (although I hope to eventually make a tour of some sites in Virginia and Maryland with a friend from the DC area who is actually a blood descendant of General Sheridan). But I have watched the Ken Burns repeats and recently bought another documentary on DVD (The American Civil War by Edward Feuerherd). My friend also sent me an academic CD lecture series on the War, and I’ve just bought a map atlas of Civil War battles. I’ve even had an interesting chat or two with the resident Civil War expert in my office.

So, even though my own family had nothing at all to do with the blue versus gray in the 19th Century USA, I’ve finally come around to making it a part of my own life. We are all carried along by the demands of social fashion, by the interests of the people around us, and by the forces of history. We don’t select our passtimes completely in accordance with pre-existing attractions determined by our own “essential” nature. Our natures change over time, as we are influenced by our own experiences along with those of others, including those of generations long past. Hopefully, within in that process we come to better realize our own unique “essence”. I’ve come to find, through external influences, that the Civil War and the complex human themes that intertwine within it, do indeed qualify to participate within my own “core self” – just as much as the revolutionary dreams from the Vietnam days still do.

OK, I’ll stop short of breaking into a recital of “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. But I do look forward to learning more about the Civil War, and to walking the grounds where it happened. In my old age, I’m a bit more willing to let the past and the lands on which it all happened write some of the chapters within the “book of my soul”. And finally, I’ve come to accept that my generation could not and did not re-make the soul of humanity.