M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

Fields of Fury By James M. McPherson
by Stephen Wunderli

In 1976, my ignorance was at its peak. I was 16 years old. My brother was 17, and not much more aware of the world than I was. We grew up in Salt Lake City, in an enclave of generic homes too new to have any real history to prop them up. So my father decided to pack the station wagon and haul us all across the Country, stopping at major historical points, taking the nickel tour and relying on our mother to read tourist tracts between chapters of Old Yeller as we bounced from point of interest to memorial to Howard Johnson's. Suddenly the world became longer than an eight-track tape, more in-depth than Jonathon Livingston Seagull, and stocked with events more meaningful than Woodstock.

We toured Gettysburg and Williamsburg. Held the primitive surgeon tools for removing a gangrene limb. Collected lead bullets and tried to understand why our Nation had at one time been at war with itself. It was a question that lasted long after the trip was over. I had grown up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance: “One Nation, indivisible…” there was something schizophrenic about the civil war. I understood the issue of slavery, why human beings should not be held in bondage for any reason. And I understood the Federal versus State governmental view. But what I could not, and still do not understand, is the brutality that the opposing arguments created. Perhaps I never will.

However, all school-age children should understand the history of the war itself. It defines us to a degree. Not just the war, but the resulting peace and building up of a Nation. Atheneum has published a remarkably easy to understand book on the civil war titled: Fields of Fury, by James M. McPherson. It is outlined chronologically, stocked with period paintings and photographs and features an easy to read style, sections of quick facts and diagrams of battle sequences and strategies.

We may never fully understand why this Country was at war with itself. But it is a lesson in history our children should never forget.

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