Virtual Trivia

Question 30: A Lasting Legacy

April 30, 2021

What is the legacy of the Civil War?

Mathew Warshauer, in his book Connecticut in the American Civil War, writes that after the Civil war, Americans confronted the largest postwar adjustment in history, even to this day.

The outcome of the Civil War resulted in a strengthening of U.S. foreign power and influence, as the definitive Union defeat of the Confederacy firmly demonstrated the strength of the United States Government and restored its legitimacy to handle the sectional tensions that had complicated U.S. external relations in the years before the Civil War.

In a speech given at the dedication of the Soldiers’ Monument in Springfield, Mass., September 28, 1885,” Joseph Hawley, Colonel of Connecticut’s 7th Regiment, said, that, slavery “was the underlying cause of the nation’s calamities,” and that “universal liberty was established with emancipation.”

Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Coe on their porch. Coe lost his arm in battle during the Civil War. Later in life, Coe was considered the unofficial mayor of Ridgebury. Photo by Joseph Hartmann Studios, ca. 1900

For the opening of the Centennial Commemoration in 1961, Commission member Robert Penn Warren published The Legacy of the Civil War, in which he wrote that “we became a nation only with the Civil War.” America’s perpetuity, at least from within, would never again be challenged. Secession was dead. Another truth, he insisted, was that “the Civil War abolished slavery, even if it did little or nothing to abolish racism."

The memory of war inevitably changes as those who actually participated in a conflict pass on. A new generation can never fully experience the fear, despondence and loss, or the joy, victory and nationalism of those who came before. Every nation deserves to remember and promote the justice of its cause and the sacrifice of those who fought.

It is certainly something to think about.