literature

The Tragedy of History

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     I have always regarded the academic subject of history with neither fascination nor dread.  It was a decent enough class, to be sure; not quite so overly complex as most high-level mathematics, not quite so talent-heavy as art and music, not quite so pressingly important as the various sciences.

     I'm going to be honest right here: I would never have taken a history class this semester if it weren't required of me.  But, as fate would have it, it was and I did.  My class covers the history of the United States of America, and I approached it with the boredom which I had previously reserved for other mandatory snooze-fests the system forced me to endure.

     I found, to my surprise, that I enjoyed the class.  What really enacted this change, oddly enough, was the book.  The book is well-written and engaging, and I actually found myself reading the text with some interest.  What I truly respect about it, however, is that each chapter begins with an excerpt of writing from the era it discusses;  a diary entry, a speech, a letter, or a newspaper article, to name a few.

     The chapter concerning the U.S. Civil War, which I read not long ago, begins with one such excerpt:  in this case, a letter written by a Union soldier.  I learned that this soldier's name was Sullivan Ballou.  He was a 32-year-old lawyer and aspiring politician from Rhode Island, had a wife named Sarah, and two children.  Sullivan, a devoted admirer of Abraham Lincoln, joined a volunteer regiment when the fighting broke out, and marched with them to Washington D.C.

     Nearby, the Confederate army was amassing.  Knowing that the upcoming battle was inevitable, Sullivan realized he might never see his wife again.  The possibilty inspired him to write a letter to Sarah while he still had the time.  The letter follows as thus:

     July 14, 1861
     Camp Clark, Washington D.C.
     My very dear Sarah:

     The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days, perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

     Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure, and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. "Not my will, but thine O God, be done." If it is necessary that I should fall on the battle-field for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing, perfectly willing, to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.

     But, my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys I lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with sorrows; when, after having eaten for long years the bitter fruit of orphanage myself, I must offer it as their only sustenance to my dear little children; is it weak or dishonorable, while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly in the breeze, that my unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless, contest with my love of country?

     I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death...

     Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but omnipotence could break, and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battle-field.

     The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me-perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar-that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and that when my last breath escapes me on the battle-field, it will whisper your name.

     Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm!...

     But, O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest night, amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours, always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

   Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again...


     Sullivan


     Sullivan Ballou marched to Manassas, Viginia, a few days after composing this letter, and on July 21 the Battle of Bull Run, the first battle of that Civil War, commenced.  He died in that battle.

     That letter, and the brief excerpt of Sullivan Ballou's life, greatly shook me.  Words raced through my head, screaming that Sullivan Ballou was a man, a real person like you or I, and he died in that battle, bearing away the ghosts of his doubt and his love.

     Sullivan's letter, and the tragic story he and his wife Sarah share, impressed upon me an epiphany.  History tells the grand, sweeping, and often heartbreaking stories of real people.  This simple, obvious fact is so often blunted by the droning voice of a professor, by the diluting filter of the mind's disinterest, by the reduction of women, men, and children to statistics or numbers, doomed forever to be represented only by ink on a page.

     I had studied history before, and some manner of this truth had gotten through to me.  I vaguely grasped that the Black Death cutting short the lives of one third of a continent was a terrible and sad thing; I primitively understood that millions of soldiers in the first World War threw their lives away for no reason at all; when I visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum at the age of twelve, I walked away feeling, as nearly all do, that such a thing should not have happened.

     But, that letter drove the final nail into the coffin which housed my tendency to marginalize history.  Suddenly, I realized that the Black Death was full of Sullivan Ballous and Sarahs; World War I had generated sorrowful letters from doomed soldiers as surely as the Civil War; the Holocaust cut down the lives of twelve million souls with families, spouses, lovers, dreams, passions, hopes, and children of their own.

     As I read through the proceeding chapter on the Civil War, the text told me stories.  Slavery forced me into chains, while strangers dragged my children away from me forever.  I clashed with men in terrible battles, cutting down those who might have been friends a mere year before.  I saw my house, my farm, and the crops which fed my family pillaged and burned by an invading army.

     At the end of the chapter, I read that Grant and Lee, the two commanding generals of the opposing armies, danced to an increasingly desperate song as the war wore on.  Towards the end, the two men began nearly flinging soldiers at each other.  In one particularly bitter engagement, Grant sent legions of men charging into a punishing volley of Lee's cannonfire.  The soldiers must have known that they raced to their doom, as the entrenched weapons loomed at them through husky smoke, yet they ran anyway.  7,000 of Grant's soldiers were mown down in eight minutes.

     Perhaps in the past, I might have glazed over that information.  But not now.  Eight minutes--that's about as long as the breaks between my classes at college.  In that amount of time, 7,000 people died.

     This work is titled The Tragedy of History.  The title does not, as might be initially guessed, refer to the needless human deaths which have occured since our race first discovered that we posses the capacity to kill one another.  Rather, the title refers to the fact that the main reason that history is taught--that humanity might learn from its mistakes--has not been, and likely will not ever be, accomplished.

     We have not learned from our mistakes.  Had we, smallpox might not have devastated the ancient American peoples; 80,000 of the people of Hiroshima might not have had their lives snuffed out in a flash of atomic fire; the Battle of Stalingrad might not have come at the cost of over one million dead soldiers.  Sullivan and Sarah might have had the chance to live a long and happy life together.

     So many of my classmates, I am sure, skipped over that chapter disinterestedly, if they even bothered reading it at all.  We do not learn from our mistakes, and that is because we simply do not care.

     In the opening paragraph, I said that I considered the sciences to be pressingly important.  I now consider history even more so.  Every time a grumpy old man lectures a class of disinterested youth, or a massive doorstopper of a book assaults the overwhelmed reader with a wall of text, behind that lies nothing less than the stories and legacies of humanity itself.  Browse them with interest; take in what they say to you, for they are in some cases all that is left of a life not unlike our own.  After all, the scope of our own lives might one day be reduced to nothing more than numbers on a page.
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yellowfire7's avatar
This is too true. I read this a few weeks ago, and it hasn't left me. One death is a tragedy but one million is a statistic. I heard it attributed to Stalin, but I also heard that it's a misquote. The hard part of history class is taking that one million and picking up the ones, to give history its full weight.