ECW welcomes guest author Mike Busovicki
Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall, Pittsburgh, PA: POW/MIA vigil, September 18, 2021.
All warriors want to know their efforts were not in vain and the deprivations they endured were worth the outcome. As the Civil War metamorphosed into a great insatiable beast, devouring ever more resources, lives, treasure, and innocence, those involved in that conflict inevitably asked, “What is this all for?” Faced with endless rows of graves and ever-growing casualty lists, what answer could possibly suffice? Entire towns might be in mourning when their local militia marched off as part of a volunteer regiment and suffered catastrophic losses in a horrific battle. The country was engulfed in a vast sea of heartbreak. What were the limits we were able to sacrifice?
President Lincoln unquestionably felt the same cold comfort in his own answers to that question as well, for he dedicated his entire address at Gettysburg to framing that question another way – What principles do we hold as imperative in America? Is this fight anything less than a renewal of the foundation of this nation? Must we resort to arms every time we diverge from those principles? How do we prepare for additional hardship as the contest of wills grinds on interminably? Though he elucidated the answers to those questions so thoroughly and succinctly, even Lincoln felt doubts that mere words could cover the scope and the scale of the matter. In the text of one of the most indispensable speeches in history, the great orator confesses that “the world will little note, nor long remember” their attempts to answer what the great struggle signified and what cost they were willing to pay for it.
