Year: 2011

02/7/11

O’ rly?

After reading the review on David Blight’s book, I can tell that this book would be an informative and an interesting book to read. This book talks about the vast point of views that history can be interpreted. It all depends on how you were taught the piece of information. War history is always written by the winners. Most people don’t realize that there other sides to the story. It is safe to say the victors always portray themselves as doing the justified. I think this book would give insight to others on how history is portrayed and how foolish it would be to only look at one viewpoint of the story.

Let’s take a look at what happened in the American Revolution. To Americans it might feel as though we want to emancipate ourselves from such tyrannical British. To them it could just be them wanting to keep the American colonies and the British in unity as a group.  Looking from different perspectives can change everything. Ultimately, countries like to tell history in showing themselves as holy and justified in every aspect. Therefore history is politically driven as people can retell it as whatever they like.

02/7/11

Let the memory fight against history

The book review “Race and Reunion” by David Blight is an interesting book to me. I used to think that history is always evidence, can not be changed. From the book review I found that about history, is not always entirely “fair”, the memory sometimes might distorted, or even seriously out of shape. The most important inspiration i got from the book review is that historical memory could be politically motivated. I think the book review will benefit to everyone, because it uses Civil war as an example to emphasize that every thing both has two sides,maybe we do not know the facts of history, or not the whole truth of history.

Can you think of another example of a shared experience that is remembered in many different ways? Nanjing Massacre was the first thing that comes to my mind.This is an indelible piece of history. 70 years ago, this is a not many people know the news, Tragic pain of a nation, Another country is a bloody crime;70 years later, when an individual’s memory has become history, When a group also working to conceal the fact，People began to shed tears for those souls away. In Nanjing Massacre, 200,000 or more to more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were killed by Japanese troops, one third of Nanjing city burned down.But how Japanese textbooks describe invasion of China? They are trying to cover up historical facts. In their textbooks, Nanjing Massacre only 40,000 people got killed, there are some picture shows that Japanese soldier help the Chinese old woman and  Japanese military distribution of candy to Chinese children……

02/7/11

Thats not how I remembered it!

I found David Blight’s book fairly interesting as he tries to introduce a new way to look at past events. There are always two sides to a story and historical events are no different. Take the Civil War for instance. Although the Southerners lost the Civil War, their opinions to the cause of the war greatly differs from the opinions of Northerners. Simply said, people who retell the story of the civil war often include their bias opinions making it difficult to understand the true nature of such an historical event. For example, many white Americans remembered African Americans fighting in the Civil War merely because they were being faithful and loyal to their “masters”. In another person’s mind, the African Americans fought in hopes to end slavery. This new perspective allows readers to scrutinize how history is remembered and how it greatly influences our values on race today. In other words, David Blight’s book may give a unique insight to historians or politics.

Based on Eric Foner’s book review, historical memory plays an important role in politics. Certain periods of time such as the Civil War may have influenced many political decisions. An example would be Abraham Lincoln’s decision to start reconstruction in the south rather than administering punishment.

On December 7th, 1941 the attack on Pearl Harbor shocked many Americans. Many individuals have their own opinions and viewpoints of why such an attack was necessary. Japanese soldiers may have felt this attack was necessary in order to divert the U.S. ‘s attention from other Japanese plans in Asia. It could be possible Japanese politics felt it was time for the U.S. to be involved in WW II. Many Americans probably felt the attack was completely uncalled for, after all the U.S. had not implicitly joined into WW II. Nonetheless, many people have different opinions about the attack on Pearl Harbor and surely some opinions are more tuned to facts than others.

02/7/11

History=Memory

David Blight’s book “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” basically is a book of collective memory of Americans, Blacks and Whites. Based on Eric Foner’s book review, this book sounds interesting to me because as a person who has never gone through the real war, I really want to know more inside stories of Civil War besides what we have learned from the textbooks. I would recommend this book to people who have gone through the Civil War and who might interesting to know more about the consequences of Civil War from different perspectives.

As Eric Foner says in his book review, “memory is a product of history”. I completely agree with him since that sometimes what people remembered is the consequences of the history. Many historical events were been remembered in so many ways, such as in novels, in monuments and most important it is stored in people’s mind. Historical memory sometimes can reveal things that people usually did not notice. One disadvantage of that is people see things from different perspectives, so it is up to the historian to judge.

The Nanking Massacre which happened in China in 1937 is one of the examples which are remembered in many different ways. The memory of Nanking Massacre reflected in novels, movies, and monuments. I remember my teacher showed us a movie of Nanking Massacre in which it contents many of people’s accounts of what happened in Nanking Massacre.

I think different memories are politically motivated because people usually want to have positive thoughts about such figure or such event; thus, it is very hard to tell whether a person’s account is reliable or not.

02/7/11

which is the truth

After reading the review of “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory”, the book sounds interesting to me. Author, David Blight mentions that there are different memories about Civil War caused by the political motivation. For instance, in “emancipationist view, the war is bringing a rebirth of the republic in the name of freedom and equality, but reconciliationist memory is to emphasize what the two sides shared in common”. He says that “race” is an important fact for politician to modify the truth of Civil war in American memories and illuminate that the history we learned is a bias made of the ‘winer’. Therefore, I think reading the book will benefit to everyone.
The other example is Nanjing Massacre. This is a sad memory for everyone. 18 September 1937, Japanese invaded Nanjing. Japanese soldiers raped and killed 300,000 Chinese civilians during one week. Those soldiers played a game that is who kill most Chinese people and treat Chinese people lower than animals. As a result, Chinese government makes Nanjing Massacre as national disgrace and every Chinese people learn the history when they were kids. However, this unhumanized action of Nanjing Massacre was denied by the Japanese government. They stop teaching the history and eliminate the truth on textbook. Additionally, Japanese officials worship the war murders as heroes. Now, Nanjing Massacre still is a controversy between Chinese and Japanese governments.

02/7/11

Remembering What Was Meant To Be Forgotten

How America remembers the Civil War or any other historical events, is always going to be based on who wrote history.  Mostly on someones documented memories.  Using primary documents that historians have gathered.  Each with enough supporting evidence to draw up a valid conclusion.  “Valid meaning, each piece of evidence supports the conclusion that certain events occurred, but doesn’t necessarily makes it true or sound.

The review that Eric Foner writes about Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” by David Blight showed that many people remember the Civil War differently.  Everything from the cause of the war,  political views,  rebuilding, and how it should be looked back on was different; causing drifts and segregation.  It actually made me want to read the book.   I mean I was actually shocked to discover how the celebration of Memorial Day was started, and even more by whom.  It use to just be a day off from work for me.  I can honestly say that has changed a bit.  Funny, while speaking to some friends about it, none of them knew that was how that national holiday began.

The review helped solidify my view of what in history is actually available to you.  How much of the truth do we actually know? How much are we allowed to know?  The people in power make the laws, and the people in power write history.  One should think that judging from what we know about that past, you can come to appreciate, and really thank those people who are able to seek the truth…as they saw it.  The black soldiers that died in the war, could have easily been left out of the memoirs, letters, and documents from those time.  Foner even mentioned how Blight “…gives black Americans a voice…denied in work of memory…”  This to me, shows that historians can choose to omit a lot of the past, if they haven’t already.  This would have completely stolen the voices of black America, and kept us from knowing about the past that many would wish was forgotten. Our current war on terror, is an example of history, though not very distancan be views as being very  politically motivated.  Why are we in the war?  Is it because of the 9/11 terrorist attack, oil, weapons of mass destruction’s, and/or war profiteering. This list can grow longer depending on who you ask.

02/7/11

archiving history

History, this is something that allows us to re-live our past and never forget what has happend.  Today’s version of histroy is not the same as the past.  In the past there was no technology or electronic devices used to video tape history.  All the history we know of today is either by means of writing with feather and pen or by searching the earth’s crust for signs of life.  Now-a-days We have almost anything important that has happend on video.  It is not going to be hard for archeologists in the future to learn about our present history.  In fact the people of the future will be so ahead because they can viually see our history that it will help improve theirs.  I think archiving tweets is pointless and is definately a waste of space and paper.  The only positive that can come out of it is that it would give a few people jobs.

Regarding wikileaks.  I believe this was terrible for the country because not only was the U.S. Gov’ts secrets exposed, in the eyes of others it made the U.S.(usually known as a super power) look like a chicken that can’t control it’s eggs.  Things U.S. citizens had no busy knowing about were leaked and it could only cause damage to the country as opposed to people’s curiousity being pleasured

02/7/11

What really happened?

Eric Foner’s book review of “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory”, by David W. Blight, shows that it would prove to be an interesting read.  It sheds light on the fact that history should not be accepted for its face value.  As Napoleon once said “History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon”.  The result of a battle is quite simple, there is a winner and a loser; and the only side of the story that is heard is that of the victor.  This creates a bias and a convenient addition/deletion of certain facts and events.  The picture that results is therefore a distorted image, not an accurate representation of the actual events.  The people who would most benefit from reading this book are students, for the reason that many believe that what they were taught in grammar school is the way it actually happened.  This book would teach them to other half of the story, and perhaps get them to begin questioning other historical events, encouraging them to discover the truth for themselves.

An event that is remembered in many different ways is the concept of Manifest Destiny that the United States used to expand westward.  Many believe that the government relocated the nation’s Native American population in a fair manner and that they agreed to actually move in the first place.  This is an ideal thought but, the reality was much more brutal and violent.  In reality the Native Americans were essentially told move to a designated remote location, with useless land and die there, or stay and fight the troops that would be sent to “relocate” them i.e., get slaughtered in battle.  In the case of the Native Americans, the moves taken were absolutely rooted in political agenda.  In the case of the North Vs. the South, the moves taken were also based in political dominance.  The north wanted to erase the fact that the country had been divided so they tried to tarnish the image of the South in as many ways as possible.  This included rallying the Northern voters to only vote for their politicians by “waving the bloody shirt” — reminding voters of the war — during election campaigns”, essentially guilting them into voting the way they were told.  Elections may have been rigged and power was unfairly distributed, but in the end we never heard about it, because remember “we won the war”.

02/6/11

“Who controls the past, Controls the future” -George Orwell, 1984

What was so interesting about Eric Foner’s review was his remark about what goes in historical memory can have political motives. It eerily reminds me of the book “1984” by George Orwell and how history is manipulated by the party to keep check of what is being remembered. And we know from Neurology and psychology that what we remember plays a fundamental role in forming the basis of our reality.

Foner mentions the dichotomy between the views provided by the North and South about how the Civil War should be remembered. One was the “Emancipationist” view provided by the North which emphasized freedom and equality for all men. The south embraced the “Reconciliationist” view which accentuated the commonality between the two sides and the bravery of the individual soldiers. The Reconciliationist view downplayed the role of slavery as the cause of the Civil War and Foner also mentioned how the South still embodied the with supremacy view even after the Civil War. David Blight’s book does seem to render important facts about how we remember the Civil War, but I am not so sure if it would be an interesting read for me, I had rather read the condensed review! But maybe serious history students and historians might find the book useful. Another event in history I think is remembered differently is the War against Iraq in 2003. The two most prevalent views is that the war was caused by the threat of WMDs in Iraq, while the other view is that the prime concern was taking control of the huge oil reserves in Iraq. Both view might have political agenda and that the democrats may advance the latter view to portray the Republican party as composed of greedy capitalists.  

02/6/11

Some events is not over

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. By David W. Blight. I think this book is very interesting because it brings history back to what happened in the Civil War. It refreshes people memory, what we learned in the history class. But just read the review, we can found a lot detail that we did not learn in the class. So this is very good book to read if you want to know more about the Civil War. Everyone can benefit from the reading because the civil war was the most divisive war in the American history. Most American died in this war than in any other.  So people can get more detail in the book. This book review shows that race is very important part of the civil war, I think  African –Americans  should treated equal than white, because they are sacrificed their live just like white people, they are also the hero of the America too.

The one of example remembered in many different ways is Nanjing Massacre. As a Chinese; this is first thing come to my mind. On December 13, 1937, during this period, hundreds of the Chinese civilians and disarmed solider were murdered and 20000-80000 women were raped by solider of the Japanese army. This is terrible thing in the Chinese history.  People in that time, like live in the hell, people worried their will die soon, or their family. After short time, Japanese government try to clean up this history, they are pretending no things happen. So this never mention in Japanese textbooks.

02/6/11

A War to Remember

In the book review of “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, ” by Eric Foner, it sheds light on the distorted memory of the Civil War. The Civil War may have ended, but the battle of how to remember it is still going on. When asked about their opinions on the war, a Southerner will most likely give a completely different answer than a Northerner. This is primarily because of politics. Both the North and the South wanted the memory of the Civil War to be favorable to them.  In addition, our perspective of the Civil War depends on how racial relations are in present day.

This is an important issue because historical memories are valuable sources to understanding the past. If memories are manipulated, it will present a biased, false impression of the event. There are many instances of historical happenings that result in different experiences and views. For example, the truth about the first Thanksgiving. In American textbooks, the first Thanksgiving was illustrated to be happy and harmonious. The story goes that the Pilgrims met a nice Native American, called Squanto, who taught them how to plant corn.  Out of respect, the Pilgrims invited the Native Americans for a Thanksgiving feast. However, the truth about Thanksgiving is that Pilgrims did not come up with it. Indians had been celebrating Thanksgiving for centuries. Pilgrims were never actually part of it. In the 1890s, the Pilgrims started to be tied in with the tradition after Abraham Lincoln made it a national holiday.

The book is interesting because it reveals the forgotten heroes and repressed memories of the Civil War. It is a useful opportunity to enlighten the people, who previously held certain biases or reservations regarding the war.

02/6/11

Forgive, but never forget

David Blight’s new book, “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory”, talks about political motivation behind the different history memories of the American Civil War. This topic gets my attention immediately since I have experienced something similar myself. Being a Korean Chinese, I learned both Chinese and Korean History. One thing they have in common is that both countries suffered deeply from Japanese invasion early this century. Generations after the invasion, however, students of these three countries have a very different idea towards the war.

Once I had a conversation about history war with one of my Japanese friends. He insisted that the invasion of Korea was to help the Korean people since that’s what he was taught at school. He said the occupation of Korea and part of China was just an ‘expansion’, was to build ‘a better East Asian.’ For me, my history textbook talks about how Japanese army killed Chinese in the number of millions.

Just like explained in the “Race and Reunion,” some Japanese want to gain their political influence by changing the way to remember the war, portraying their criminal ancestors as heroes. Textbook has power to reinforcement an ethnic community and be proud of one’s country. People distort history to make young generation feel proud while they are learning “great” commitments their ancestor did.

To be fare, I don’t think they are the only one who remembers history politically motivated. Korean and Chinese governments emphasize the killing to remind their people that, as bad as the governments can be, they are way better than the foreign invaders.

 

 

Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall

02/6/11

Truth behind biased historical events

I find David Blight’s book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, to be very incisive because he brings back the unheard voices and memories of neglected African-Americans who participated in the Civil War; in order to bring forth the truth behind the biased history imprinted in our culture. African-American soldiers should be honored and given credit to because they are also heroes who sacrificed their lives for the Civil War just like the White soldiers. Everyone would benefit from reading this book because there are always two sides to a story and we get to know the other side of the story of those who also participated in the war but was neglected. Blight’s book shows the importance of historical memory because there can be politically motivated bias in historical events, in this case he brings to light the truth behind politically motivated bias of historical events that took place in the Civil War.

One example of a historical event that is remembered differently is the Rape of Nanjing. Many Chinese men and women suffered from barbaric treatment by the Japanese invaders. Many thousands of women were rape, brutally injured, mutilated and killed. However the Japanese are in denial of these actions. Japanese school textbooks, historical works, or newspapers never mentioned anything about the Rape of Nanjing. This shows that Japan is putting this historical event under the covers and pretending that this massacre never happened, their actions prove that this is most definitely politically motivated. Japans’ denial prevents its whole nation from facing history and the truth.

Rape of Nanjing Memorial Hall

02/6/11

Fake Memory… Revealing!

The saying, “history is written by winners,” proves that history is not always accurate as what people think. In fact, history is accurate at all because people have their own views of history, and difference between them is whether they are close to accuracy or not. I think the book “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” by David W. Blight sounds very interesting because what he does in the book is to reveal the different aspects of how we remember the Civil War. Race, religion, culture, region, and other factors affect how we look at the history. Not everyone is historian or has the interest to discover the “real” history. The major source of where our knowledge about the history comes from text books, which might not provide enough details about the certain events. Therefore, I think everyone should read this book and will eventually take something out of it. Blight gives several examples that memory of history can be made up by somebody else. For instance, a memory that was once promoted by the Southern Historical Society claimed that slavery did not exist in the South and the African Americans were just faithful servants to their white masters. We all know that this is untrue because we have all the evidences that can prove it. 

The war between Americans and Native Americans was another piece of memorythat is remembered in different ways. The peace was broken when British came and took over Native Americans’ homeland. This was not the end of the exclusion. When the U.S was formed, Americans started to expand their territory to the west, which many of Native Americans had been killed because of the expansion. On the face of it, Americans were saying to civilize those savages. But in fact, they were taking their lands and lives away. Eventually, they were forced to move to the Indiana Territory. The memory for Native Americans are painful because they were driven out of their mother land, and many of their people were killed because of the enforcement. On the other hand for Americans, it might not seem as bad as it is in Native Americans’ eyes. Most people think they have a better life under the U.S. Government’s control and they are well protected. As what it says in the review, “the Civil War is not over.” It might seem it is over, but the gap between people is getting bigger. Discrimination, prejudice, injustice, and stereotyping are signs of this continuous war. I think many of the memories are politically motivated because the government will always try to adjust their figure positively, which many of the improper facts can be potentially hidden. 

 

02/6/11

Racial Propaganda

Eric Foner did a wonderful job of making a brave and insightful book sound painstakingly boring. His review was written as a monotonous summary void of any important historical implications that the book itself has. As to the book itself, I would see it as a study into racial propaganda, although neither Foner nor Blight seem to mention or point this out. Blight did a great deed in revisiting Civil War memories, simultaneously reevaluating our modern memories of history. Using “Race and Reunion” as the median, Blight was able to synthesize the past and present, showing us that memories need to be analyzed and studied just as thoroughly as historical evidence, and even more so as memories are more susceptible to alteration.

The book review alludes to the importance of historical memory and how memories may shape history more so than events. Foner showed us that memories were able to push the South’s agenda in a more effective manner than the North’s war victory was able to suppress it. Even to this day there are numerous events, whether it be America’s suppression of Native Americans, or Fascist Germany’s murder of Gypsies, gays, Russians, etc, or America’s invasion into Afghanistan and Iraq, and China’s censorship of Tibet, where memories of people, push personal agendas to the point of blinding us of objective facts. Memories are subjective and as such may very well be politically motivated. Leading me to think that had Blight written a book on historical memories and used the civil war as a chapter in a book full of historical examples of how memories shape history, he would’ve done the world a much greater service.

02/6/11

Remember the History

The book review “Race and Reunion” by David Blight sounds like a interesting book. This book is interesting because people can know how others remembered the history of the Civil War. Just like what the review said, these studies is the conviction that memory is a product of history. It is being constructed and in many ways political. I think that most people can benefit from this reading because we can learn about black Americans that were often denied in works. Blight believes that “how we think about the Civil War has everything to do with how we think about race and its history in American life.”

This book review shows how race plays an important role of historical memory. During the Civil War, Northerner fought for the freedom of slavery. The  Southerner fought to keep slavery. In the book review it says how slavery was not part of the Civil War. This shows two different sides that people saw during that period.
Another event that was remembered in many different ways was the Vietnam War.  During the Vietnam War, the United States fought North Vietnam in order to contain communism and stop it from spreading to South Vietnam. Many believe that if we did not fight this war communism might have spread even further than Vietnam. The other point of view is that many Americans thought it was a waste of our military soldiers and a waste of time. U.S.A spent many years in Vietnam and lost a great deal of soldier during the war only to have lost. I think that some memories are politically motivated since we have different points of view can may motivate others.

02/6/11

Things Remembered

The book sounds pretty interesting to me. In the book review, Eric Foner says, “‘Race and Reunion’ is the most comprehensive and insightful study of the memory of the Civil War yet to appear.” It gives a lot of information to people who get to know Civil War history straight forward from text books. As a foreign student, I would be one of them. Before coming to the Unites State, I’ve only read about Civil War from the text books when I was in school, I only knew that Civil War was about Americans from the north and south fighting over slavery and trades. However, I could get more details and facts from many other books like Race and Reunion.

The book uses Civil war as an example to emphasize how important historical memories are. Eric Font indicates that Blight has used some historical events to debate what happened during some other historical events. For example, “The origins of the reconciliationist memory, Blight argues, can be traced to debates during Reconstruction, when Republicans made a commitment to legal and political equality for the former slaves and then abandoned it in the face of violent opposition from the white South and a Northern retreat from the ideal of equality.”Eric Foner also uses the examples in the book tells us to view historical events (like Civil War) by different angles and ways.

Talking about similar examples, as a Chinese, the first thing come to my mind is the Nanjing Massacre. It was probably one of the cruelest massacres against humanity in recent history.  In this event, an estimate of three hundred thousand Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were murdered and 20,000 women were raped by soldiers of the imperial Japanese Army in the city of Nanjing, during the years of 1937-1938. The massacre also involves political elements; some Japanese nationalists argue the massacre was fabricated.  While the Japanese government has records of the number of casualties after Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the Nanjing massacre perpetrated by them seems to be a forgotten issue. The exact number of killed Chinese civilians will never be disclosed as evidence was destroyed shortly after the Japanese surrender to the invasion war. Historical facts remember the massacre, while political manipulations try to clean it from the record.

02/6/11

Remembering The Past

David Blight’s “Race and Reunion” seems to be a very good history book because it shows that some historical evens can be remembered differently. There were two opinions on why the Civil War started. The emancipationists believed that slavery was a cause of the Civil War. The reconciliationists dismissed this thought and claimed that the Civil War happened because of the disagreement in the state rights. What i found very interesting is that the book overthrows the concept that winners always get to write history. Even though the South lost the Civil War, the reconciliationists “won the war over memory”.  I think politics probably played an important role in ensuring that the Southern view of history would prevail.

Another example in history of a shared experience that is remembered in many different ways is the origins of the Cold War. People disagree over the question of who was responsible for the breakdown of American-Soviet relations. In addition, the debate over what resulted in slavery in 17th century is another example. Some people say that  slavery was a result of white racism, while others claim that racism was a result of slavery.

I believe anyone with an interest in the Civil War will benefit from reading this book because it provides both sides of the story. It is important for people to know how history gets distorted in an absolutely unfair manner and how some books don’t speak the truth.  It is not fair when important events and people who deserve recognition are left out of the history.

02/5/11

Memory is More Influential than Reality

Here is an over-used quote: “History is written by the winners.” An impossible mission for the historians would be to make a politically unbiased, empirically true, and objective record on a specific event. Given the right to write about a topic without restrictions imposed by the government, which is a privilege that’s not given in many nations, historians still experience many hardships in recording a historical incident by researching on possibly distorted data and opinions. Therefore, a book on the “reality” of a historical incident, such as the civil war, could possibly just become another voice in a great debate, whose conclusion may be impossible to reach.

This is why David Blight’s “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” might be very interesting and practical. Although Blight may avoid the challenge of searching accurate data and interpreting biased opinions, he can spend time and effort on the reactions and influences of the people with different perspectives on the war. If that’s what Blight did in his book, this book would be very beneficial to the people interested in politics.  Rather than scrutinizing the actual events, politicians may be more interested in how the events influenced the development of our system. Eric Foner has already explained why the historical memory is important: historical memory great affect the politicians when they carry out major reforms, such as racial movements and feminine movements. The book review mentioned Wilson’s action as an example of the actions taken by politicians with different perspectives. Another example of shared experiences that is remembered in different ways would be the Iraq War, in which some people is remembering it as America’s invasion of a nation for the oil, while others remember it as proper actions needed for national security.

In a nation of democracy, many memories may be political driven, and some memories are shaped by the speeches delivered by politicians. A book on the historical memories would reflect the attitudes of our citizens than a book that recorded the reality that occurred.

02/5/11

not a choice, slavery must be abolished!

Civil War should be remmebered not only by its devastating affect to the country, but also be remembered with heroic soldiers who sacrificed their life to win the war and save the union despite of their race. From the David Blight’s passage, I understand many causes of descrimination in post civil war era. There were 50,000 African American soldiers who fought in the war while  only white soldiers were being monumented and remembered which showed aspects of white supremacy. Segregation will eventually take place which was the affect of white supremacy. I think the book is interesting because civil war was a war where the succesion of southern states from the union resulted in a battle that really fought over issues of slavery. I also think it will be interesting to understand how African Americans were treated after the war, if they were honored as much as the whites. Historical memory should be rememebered in the right way.

What I find ironic about later passage is that President Wilson, being a peace maker by mentioning to form a League of Nation during his fourteen points speech, he actually supported slavery by supporting the existence of Ku Klux Klan. I think it is important that history should be rememebered and told to the future generation in an unbiased form. The Vietnam war was a historical event that was being rememebered in a different way or somehow biased. It was viewed as a successful war at somepoint because the US had contained the spread of communism from South Vietnam to North Vietnam. It was also considered a failed mission because US had lost massive amount of soldiers in Veitnam, and the war lasted many years that did not unify Vietnam into a democratic country. I think with political left and right wing manipulating the American government system, there is always two sides with one side always trying to attack the oppostion in the hope of gaining more control over the other in this most democratic country.