Lifting up my relative General John Fulton Reynolds on this Memorial Day (along with the connection between the Civil War and civil rights). A respected senior commander in the Union Army, Reynolds was key in committing the Army to the Battle of Gettysburg (where he unfortunately died).
Resistant to the politics of Washington, D.C., Reynolds previously declined President Abraham Lincoln’s request that he command the Army of the Potomac (the penchant to buck bureaucracy remains strong in his family). Today, you can see him standing resolutely in places throughout Pennsylvania (including in front of Philadelphia’s City Hall).
Many think that the Civil War was a long ago moment in time - separate and apart from who we are today. Columbia University Professor Barbara Fields corrects this misguided notion:
“I think what we need to remember, most of all, is that the Civil War is not over until we, today, have done our part in fighting it, as well as understanding what happened when the Civil War generation fought it.
William Faulkner said once that history is not “was,” it’s “is,” and what we need to remember about the Civil War is that the Civil War “is,” in the present, as well as the past.
The generation that fought the war, the generation that argued over the definition of the war, the generation that had to pay the price in blood, that had to pay the price in blasted hopes and a lost future also established a standard that will not mean anything until we finish the work.
You can say there’s no such thing as slavery anymore, we’re all citizens. But if we’re all citizens, then we have a task to do to make sure that that, too, is not a joke. If some citizens live in houses and others live on the street, the Civil War is still going on. It’s still to be fought, and regrettably, it can still be lost.”
#CivilWar #civilrights #historylives #justice #Pennsylvania
President - Strategic Resource Solutions
1w🚀