150th Anniversary of the Civil War

The 150th Anniversary of the Civil War will be commemorated from 2011-2015. Given that the first shot of the Civil War was fired right here in Charleston, and several important battles fought here - reflecting on this crucial conflict in the nation's history is important. The below writing is from the book 'Southerners' by the great Journalist Charles Kuralt. Mr. Kuralt, as a significant scholar on American History, made a personal journey across America - chronicling much Americana along the way. His reflection on events that preceded the Civil War are very interesting...."Why was the word "damn" always put before "Yankees"? Well, Yankees and Southerners never did have anything in common. The history is well known: the North was commercial, the South agricultural. The conflict goes way back, before the Civil War, before the Revolution. Southerners and Northerners did not have anything in common even then. It wasn't easy to get from one place to the other. I'm always amazed to read that the best way to get from Boston to Philadelphia in Colonial times was by sea. To go farther South was really difficult. It was inhumanly difficult for George Washington to get from Philadelphia back to his home in Virginia. Georgia, the thirteenth colony, might as well have been on another planet. It was easier to travel West after the National Road was built. But try to go South, and you had a rough time. There was no U.S. Highway 1. Everybody who made trips by road in those days described the roads with horror. The National Road, finally was built and went all the way to Illinois. Travel writers of the day said it was as fine a highway as any in Europe - an Appian Way of the New World. I remember John Adams's letter to Abigail about what he thought of Edward Rutledge, the South Carolina delegate to the Continental Congress. He said Rutledge was "totally vain, totally empty" -- you know, a Southerner. He believed that Rutledge, and by extension most of his fellow Southerners, were all style, with no substance. The fact that the two of them could agree on this one thing - that the nation had to break with Britain - is impressive to me. It was the one, fundamental thing that they could agree upon. The South was committed to make the break, even though much of its commerce, the cotton trade, depended on England. States like New York hung back, but the South was ready for a free country. It was that independent streak showing that the South possesses. That streak lay dormant through Jackson's Presidency, but as the country grew and the differences between South and North became more evident, it revived as an ember, then as a flame. We must remember that the men who started the Civil War were the sons of men who fought the Revolution, so the concept of a break for independence, defended with guns, was not as foreign to them as it is to us now." Charles Kuralt