So, I gave up on The Optimist's Daughter. Sorry, Eudora, I just wasn't compelled to pick it up even though it is a short book and I had already read half of it.
In between not finishing The Optimist's Daughter and beginning The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, I read Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower. I highly recommend it. It is a very readable but complex history of the Plymouth Colony during its founding and then through King Philip's War. For anyone interested in reading about early American history and New England's role in it, Mayflower is a must.
The Foreword of The Killer Angels makes a fascinating point about the Confederate and Union armies. Shaara writes, "It is an army of seventy thousand men. They are rebels and volunteers. They are mostly unpaid and usually self-equipped. It is an army of remarkable unity, fighting for disunion. It is Anglo-Saxon and Protestant..."
In contrast, he describes the Union army as "a strange new kind of army, a polyglot mass of vastly dissimilar men, fighting for union. There are strange accents and strange religions and many who do not speak English at all. Nothing like this army has been seen upon this planet. It is a collection of men from many different places who have seen much defeat and many commanders."
What to make of this contrast? Both armies represent some element of America - our past, what was necessary to create a strong foundation: a group of individuals from similar backgrounds, similar religions, who drew on similar beliefs and ideologies to establish a nation out of the wilderness. And our present and future: men who came to this country and fought for it not because they shared the same background as those who established it, but because they so bought into the idea of the United States.
It is something to be reminded of in these days, while we continue to struggle with the American identity. It is also an important and useful reminder that what has made this nation strong is our ability to be inclusive not exclusive.
In between not finishing The Optimist's Daughter and beginning The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, I read Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower. I highly recommend it. It is a very readable but complex history of the Plymouth Colony during its founding and then through King Philip's War. For anyone interested in reading about early American history and New England's role in it, Mayflower is a must.
The Foreword of The Killer Angels makes a fascinating point about the Confederate and Union armies. Shaara writes, "It is an army of seventy thousand men. They are rebels and volunteers. They are mostly unpaid and usually self-equipped. It is an army of remarkable unity, fighting for disunion. It is Anglo-Saxon and Protestant..."
In contrast, he describes the Union army as "a strange new kind of army, a polyglot mass of vastly dissimilar men, fighting for union. There are strange accents and strange religions and many who do not speak English at all. Nothing like this army has been seen upon this planet. It is a collection of men from many different places who have seen much defeat and many commanders."
What to make of this contrast? Both armies represent some element of America - our past, what was necessary to create a strong foundation: a group of individuals from similar backgrounds, similar religions, who drew on similar beliefs and ideologies to establish a nation out of the wilderness. And our present and future: men who came to this country and fought for it not because they shared the same background as those who established it, but because they so bought into the idea of the United States.
It is something to be reminded of in these days, while we continue to struggle with the American identity. It is also an important and useful reminder that what has made this nation strong is our ability to be inclusive not exclusive.
