Somebody’s Darling: Essays on the Civil War
This book is for any reader who thinks about life; yet the essays are all related some way or other the American Civil War. . .
The inspiration for this book is a song whose lyrics were written by a Southern woman in 1864. What did she—a sentimental young lady who wrote verses—know about the Civil War? More than we ever will. The implication throughout these pages is that traditional Civil War studies have missed some important things. Once we broaden our interests, we not only discover things about the Civil War, we find that war can teach us a few things about life.
Reader, I hope the Civil War becomes your Walden. For Henry David Thoreau, the pond in Massachusetts became a window to life. Do not worry that the idea has been used up: the Civil War was bigger than Walden Pond, and at least as deep.
These essays examine ramifications of the Civil War experience in our lives, and explore aspects of the war that lie outside the scope of traditional historical study. They probe the meaning of Gettysburg, Antietam, and the Wilderness; the lives of U. S. Grant, R. E. Lee, O. O. Howard, and also the legacy of the unknown participant, the “somebody’s darling” of the wartime song, for whom the war would come to encompass all things. Essays touch on Walt Whitman, John Keats, Henrik Ibsen, Halldor Laxness, the Iliad, the Bhagavad-Gita, and on such contemporary items as the movie Gettysburg and the Ghosts of Gettysburg phenomenon. Each of these subjects is a window into the universal experience of war.
