Friends and Colleagues,

I am consumed with thoughts of geraniums.  I like them.  And I like them in all their gaudy colors – vermilion, pink, orange, red.  Sometimes I think its fun to mix them in the same large pot so they can fight it out.  It’s the time of year to start a fight.

Books fight it out too.  A child of Hanover County.  A Polish Count. A stunning contrast which focuses the lens of history.

The Nevins bibliography describes Allan’s Army of Northern Virginia as “balanced”.  Fair enough.  But the original owner of this copy annotated it heavily.  He was certainly partisan. A child during the war; an adult who was an ardent proponent of the Lost Cause.  His Two Little Confederates was on my bookshelf when I was a child; his The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem, written in defense of lynching, was not. 

Adam Gurowsky, wrote several first hand accounts of the war.  He was an ardent abolitionist and  a pal of Walt Whitman, among other prominent citizens.  Whitman attended his burial in the Congressional Cemetery and wrote that “all the big radicals were there.”

The American Civil War: fascinating, important, and terrible. Brother fought against brother.  Trite but true.  I think I prefer it when my geraniums duke it out.

Cheers,

Nick