Back in Easter Week, we marked the 150th
anniversary of the end of the Civil War, joining churches around the country in
ringing our bells to mark time when peace was announced following the surrender
at Appomattox. I grew up in Western
Maryland, a land full of reenactors, relic hunters and amateur battle
historians, and I’ve always had an interest in this defining event of American
history. Back in 1861, I resolved that I
would read take down Shelby Foote’s massive Civil War trilogy from my shelves,
where it had gathered dust for over a decade, and read it through as the cycle
of anniversaries passed. Like many of my
reading projects, this one proved a bit too ambitious, and I moved on to other
things back in 2012.
However, when my Lenten reading finished, I decided to take
up Kent Gramm’s Gettysburg, a book
passed onto me with high commendation by our senior warden, Paul Hager. Paul is an American historian by training,
with a special interest in the Civil War, and he assured me that this is one of
the best books of its kind, well worth a read.
